MEXICO : A commando of drug gang gunmen on Thursday stormed ashore at a beach on Mexico’s resort-studded Caribbean coast in front of luxury hotels and executed two drug dealers from a rival gang.
The dramatic shooting attack sent tourists scrambling for cover at the resort of Puerto Morelos, just south of Cancun.
The two suspected drug dealers killed Thursday had apparently arrived at the beach in front of the Azul Beach Resort and the Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun earlier in the day, claiming it was now their territory.
“About 15 people arrived on the beach to assassinate two men who had showed up saying they were the new dealers in the area,” the head prosecutor of Quintana Roo state, Oscar Montes de Oca, told the Radio Formula station.
Montes de Oca’s office said earlier in a statement that “there was a clash between rival groups of drug dealers on a beach” near the hotels. Several cartels are fighting for the area’s lucrative retail drug trade, including the Jalisco cartel and the a gang allied with the Gulf cartel.
Montes de Oca said one of the men targeted in the attack fled into one of the hotels before dying. The other was killed on the beach. He also said one person suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the attack, but authorities could not determine whether that person was a hotel employee or a guest because they were still undergoing medical treatment.
Gov. Carlos Joaquin said the commando wore ski masks and arrived by boat at the beach. Montes de Oca said they fled in a boat after the attack.
Joaquin called the attack “a serious blow to the development and security of the state … putting the image of the state at grave risk.”
