Bar gunfire kills seven in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — Seven men were killed in a shooting attack at a bar in Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort city of Playa del Carmen, authorities said Monday.

State and local police said the attack occurred late Sunday at the Las Virginias bar in a low-income section relatively far from the beachside tourist zone. Six men were found shot to death in the bar, and another died at a hospital.

One man was wounded but survived. He told police he was drinking beer with friends when gunshots broke out. The attackers have not yet been identified.

Playa del Carmen is on the coast facing the island of Cozumel, Mexico’s leading cruise ship destination. Once a quiet fishing and ferry town, Playa del Carmen has grown exponentially in the past two decades.

The resort is midway between Cancun and Tulum in the coastal state of Quintana Roo, which has seen homicides more than double in the past year, with 688 killings in the first 11 months of 2018, compared with 322 in the same period of 2017.

The Caribbean coast had long been largely spared the drug violence affecting other areas, but that no longer appears to be the case.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico issued a brief travel warning for Playa del Carmen in March. A February 2018 blast on a ferry apparently caused by an explosive device injured 26 people, including several Americans.