Gang violence leaves 11 dead in Mexican border city

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A gang riot inside a border prison that left two inmates dead quickly spread to the streets of Ciudad Juarez where alleged gang members killed nine more people, including four employees of a radio station, security officials said Friday.

The surge in violence recalled a far more deadly period in Juarez more than a decade earlier. Mexico’s powerful drug cartels commonly use local gangs to defend their territory and carry out their vendettas.

The federal government’s security undersecretary, Ricardo Mejía Berdeja, said the violence started inside the state prison after 1 p.m. Thursday, when member of the Mexicles gang attacked members of the rival Chapos.

Two inmates were killed and 20 injured.

Then suspected gang members outside the prison began burning businesses and shooting up Ciudad Juarez.

“They attacked the civilian, innocent population like a sort of revenge,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said. “It wasn’t just the clash between two groups, but it got to the point in which they began to shoot civilians, innocent people. That is the most unfortunate thing in this affair.”

Mejía said four employees of MegaRadio who were broadcasting a live promotional event outside a business were killed in the shooting.

Chihuahua state Attorney General Roberto Fierro Duarte said that a boy wounded in a shooting at a convenience store died later at the hospital, two women were killed in a fire at another gas station convenience store and two other men were shot elsewhere in the city.

Fierro said 10 supects had been arrested.