A police officer and four civilians were killed by gunmen in two separate incidents in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, authorities said Thursday.
Here in Ciudad Juarez, a crime-wracked metropolis just across the border from El Paso, Texas, assailants in several vehicles opened fire on municipal cops responding to what turned out to be a false report of a road accident.
One officer was killed and several others wounded, a source in the Juarez police department said.
Three passers-by also received gunshot wounds, while a child was hurt when he was struck by the car of a state agent rushing to the scene of the shooting.
Earlier, four men were slain at a nightspot in Chihuahua city, the state capital.
The victims were playing pool when armed men entered the club and ordered the rest of the patrons to leave. The intruders then approached the four at the pool table, demanded their identifications and shot them, the state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
Chihuahua accounts for around 30 percent of the roughly 50,000 drug-related killings reported in Mexico since December 2006, when newly inaugurated President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels.
With nearly 2,000 homicides in 2011, Juarez remains Mexico’s murder capital, though the death toll was down from the previous year.
