Gunmen kill five people at a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico and escape by puncturing security guards' tires with metal spikes

Armed attackers attacked a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico, killing four people and wounding five others, local authorities said Wednesday.

The attack occurred on Tuesday evening in Salamanca, in the central state of Guanajuato, the city government said in a statement.

Police and the National Guard “launched a chase to find those responsible,” but the attackers escaped by throwing down metal spikes to puncture the tires of security forces pursuing them, it said.

According to the police, three bodies of those killed were found in the rehabilitation center and a fourth on the street.

No suspects have been arrested so far.

Disputes between drug gangs in Mexico have led to rehabilitation facilities being targeted in several attacks.

Authorities say some rehabilitation facilities are used as havens for suspected members of criminal groups who are attacked by their rivals when found.

In July 2022, Six people were shot at a drug rehabilitation center near the western Mexican city of Guadalajara. Two years earlier, heavily armed men stormed a drug rehab center in downtown Irapuato, killing 27 people.

Guanajuato is Mexico's most violent state, according to official murder statistics, as fighting breaks out between the local Santa Rosa de Lima cartel and the powerful Jalisco New Generation. Last month, the The US has sanctioned a man known as “The Tank” because he allegedly ran the Jalisco Cartel's fuel theft division, earning it tens of millions of dollars a year by selling stolen gasoline through a network of seemingly legitimate companies.

Mexico has recorded more than 450,000 murders since December 2006, when a controversial military anti-narcotics operation was launched.

Violence continued after Claudia Sheinbaum took office Tuesday as Mexico's first female president in the country's more than 200 years of independence.