Seven people, including a child, were killed on Saturday by an armed group that broke into the water park in La Palma, in the state of Guanajuato (central Mexico), according to local authorities.
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Police “arrived at the scene where they found casings and the bodies of three women, three men and a 7-year-old child. One person was also seriously injured,” the town hall of Cortazar, where the attack took place, said in a statement.
According to the owner of the aquatic center, quoted in the press release, “armed subjects” arrived around 4:30 p.m. local time (22:30 GMT) to “perpetrate the attack”.
The attackers walked directly towards a group of people, ransacked a business there and took away security cameras, authorities said.
A video published by the Debate Noticias news site shows victims on the ground amid clouds of smoke apparently linked to the shooting, and several people running to take cover from the shooting or join their families.
The water park, located near a college campus, was surrounded by the military and state police.
The once prosperous industrial state of Guanajuato has become one of the most violent in Mexico, due to the war between the Jalisco Nueva Generacion (the most powerful in Mexico) and Santa Rosa de Lima cartels, which began operations in fuel theft.
Since December 2006 and the launch of a government campaign against drug trafficking, more than 350,000 murders have been recorded, most of them attributed to organized crime, according to official data.