A hearth in a drug rehabilitation middle within the violence-plagued Mexican state of Guanajuato killed 12 individuals and injured at the least three others, authorities mentioned Sunday.
The fireplace broke out early Sunday within the city of San Jose Iturbe, the place the municipal authorities mentioned it was nonetheless investigating what triggered the lethal blaze.
“We express our solidarity with the families of those who have been killed while they tried to overcome addictions,” the municipal authorities mentioned in an announcement, including that it’ll assist to pay for the funeral bills of these killed.
Consultants have been gathering proof and interviewing witnesses to ascertain “the reasons for the tragic incident,” the Guanajuato state prosecutor’s workplace mentioned.
Mexican media retailers reported that the victims of the fireplace had been locked up contained in the rehab middle.
A girl lits candles on the rehabilitation middle the place 12 individuals died attributable to a fireplace in San Jose Iturbide group, Guanajuato state, Mexico on June 1, 2025.
MARIO ARMAS/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Mexico’s privately run drug rehabilitation facilities are sometimes abusive, clandestine, unregulated and underfunded. They’ve been the targets of comparable assaults previously.
The commercial and agricultural state of Guanajuato has for years been the scene of a bloody turf battle between the Jalisco New Technology cartel and an area gang, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato has the best variety of homicides of any state in Mexico.
Simply final month, investigators discovered 17 our bodies throughout a seek for lacking individuals in an deserted home in Guanajuato. Days earlier than that, seven individuals, together with kids, have been gunned down in the identical area.
Mexican drug gangs have killed suspected street-level sellers from rival gangs sheltering at rehab services previously. Officers additionally imagine cartels typically execute sufferers who refuse to affix their ranks.
In April, gunmen shot up a drug rehab clinic within the troubled Sinaloa state, killing at the least 9 individuals.
In July 2022, six individuals have been shot useless at a drug rehab middle close to the western Mexican metropolis of Guadalajara. Two years earlier than that, closely armed males stormed a drug rehab middle within the central metropolis of Irapuato and killed 27 individuals.
In 2010, 19 individuals have been killed in an assault on a rehab middle in Chihuahua, a metropolis in northern Mexico. Greater than a dozen different assaults on such services occurred within the decade between these massacres.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
Extra from CBS Information
