26 killed at Mexican rehab site

MEXICO CITY — Drug rehabilitation centers have been frequent targets of attack in Mexico’s bloody gang wars.

But the massacre Wednesday at a facility in the city of Irapuato still managed to shock a nation gripped by escalating violence.

Police said at least four gunmen with high-powered weapons arrived in a vehicle shortly after 5 p.m., barged inside, ordered everyone on the floor and then mowed them down, executionstyle. At least 26 people were killed and five wounded.

Authorities suspect the assault was part of a ferocious turf battle between two criminal organizations — the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel — that has transformed once-peaceful Guanajuato into one of Mexico’s deadliest states.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed Thursday to not “abandon” Guanajuato and suggested that state authorities investigate possible links between local officials and organized crime.

“There has to be a division, the line has to be drawn between criminality and authority,” he said.

Criminal groups have long undermined the justice system in Mexico by paying off police, prosecutors, judges and politicians.

The attack at the “Recuperating My Life” rehab center was among the bloodiest incidents since Lopez Obrador took office 19 months ago. It came as the president was celebrating the second anniversary of the landslide election that brought him to power. In a national address, he triumphantly cited statistics that he said showed crime was slowing.

But critics questioned what they called the president’s selective use of numbers that downplayed still-rising cases of homicides and other crimes.