Gunmen kill four people at a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico, then escape by using metal nails to puncture security forces’ tires

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

The attack took place on Tuesday evening in Salamanca in the central state of Guanajuato, the municipal government said in a statement.

Police and National Guardsmen “initiated a pursuit to find those responsible,” but the attackers escaped by throwing metal spikes to puncture the tires of the pursuing security forces, the report said.

Police said three bodies of the dead were found at the rehabilitation center, while a fourth was found on the street.

No suspects have been arrested yet.

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

Authorities say some drug rehabilitation centers are used as safe havens by suspected members of criminal groups, who are attacked by their rivals when found.

In July 2022, six people were shot dead in a drug rehabilitation center near the western Mexican city of Guadalajara. Two years before, heavily armed men stormed a drug rehabilitation center in the central city of Irapuato and killed 27 people.

Guanajuato is Mexico’s most violent state, according to official homicide statistics, due to fighting 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 headed the fuel theft arm of the Jalisco Cartel, supplying it with tens of millions of dollars a year by selling stolen gasoline through a network of apparently legitimate companies.

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

The violence continued after Claudia Sheinbaum took office on Tuesday as Mexico’s first female president in the country’s more than two hundred years of independence.