A deadly attack at a community football game in Mexico has left 11 people dead, reigniting fears about security in one of the 2026 World Cup host nations.
The murder of the 11 people at a football game in Mexico has prompted widespread outrage in the central Mexican town of Loma de Flores, where sports are touted as a means of protecting young people from drug cartels.
“We no longer know where to find peace,” Norma Barron, one of the promoters of the league that was attacked on Sunday, told AFP.
On Sunday, as a family-friendly afternoon of football was coming to a close, armed men invaded the fields outside Salamanca in Guanajuato state.
Barron told AFP that the gunman arrived in at least three vehicles.
A preliminary inquiry suggested a settling of scores between two strong crime organizations.
Barron, an activist with a collective searching for tens of thousands of missing Mexicans, many of whom have been kidnapped and executed by cartels, was in the southern state of Oaxaca at the time of the incident.
As soon as the shooting started, her older son, who was at the game, called her, horrified.
“They’re attacking people; there are several dead; we’re taking cover,'” she quoted him saying in an interview at the football field, where the turf was still splattered with blood on Monday.
Local and federal police confirmed 11 dead in the latest slaughter that has sent shockwaves across violence-plagued Mexico, which will co-host this year’s FIFA World Cup alongside the United States and Canada.
A further ten persons were shot, including a woman and a minor.
Neighbors and relatives of the dead, who were still stunned a day later, told AFP that the shooting lasted 15-20 minutes.
Players’ clothing lay on the pitch, along with discarded beer cans and candles lit in commemoration of the victims.
Nearby, half a dozen cars sat abandoned, their owners having fled in fear.
Among the fatalities were at least five members of a security company in charge of protecting the event and ensuring that attendees were unarmed.
According to a federal security source who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, the guards were targeted because they worked for a company purportedly tied to the formidable Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
The attackers, according to the official, were suspected to be from the rival Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, which competes with the CJNG for gasoline, drug trafficking, and extortion in the state.
Messages on cardboard signs discovered at the scene also pointed to a conflict between the two parties.
The attack shed light on the ferocity of gang territorial fights in Guanajuato, a thriving industrial region that also serves as one of Mexico’s deadliest states.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has claimed credit for lowering the murder rate, which is now at its lowest level in a decade, after taking office in October 2024.
However, her anti-narcotics policy has yet to bear fruit in Guanajuato, where the murder rate is more than twice the national average, at 38.84 per 100,000.
The state has also seen a number of horrific attacks on entertainment facilities, including an assault on a Christmas party in December 2023 that killed 11 people and a firefight at a swimming pool in April of the same year that killed six.
Guanajuato Governor Libia Garcia declared Monday the launch of a coordinated operation between state and federal forces in the area.
