Gunmen storm into a Mexican drug rehabilitation center, killing four men and wounding two others

MEXICO CITY — Attackers shot four men and wounded two others in an attack on a Mexican drug rehabilitation center, officials said Wednesday.

Officials in the north-central state of Guanajuato said the killings occurred late Tuesday in the city of Salamanca. There was no immediate information on the condition of those wounded in the attack.

Mexico's privately run drug rehabilitation centers are often abusive, secretive, unregulated and underfunded. They have been the target of similar attacks in the past.

The industrial and agricultural state of Guanajuato has for years been the scene of a bloody turf war between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and a local gang, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato has the highest number of murders of any state in Mexico.

Mexican drug gangs have in the past killed suspected street dealers from rival gangs who sought refuge in such facilities.

In 2020, gunmen shot and killed 27 people at a rehabilitation center in another city in Guanajuato, Irapuato. In 2010, 19 people were killed in an attack on a rehabilitation center in Chihuahua, a city in northern Mexico. In the decade between these massacres, there were more than a dozen other attacks on such facilities.

The Mexican government spends relatively little money on rehabilitation, so the unregistered centers are often the only option available for poor families.

In addition, addicts and dealers who are attacked on the street by competitors sometimes take refuge in rehab clinics, making the clinics themselves a target of attack.