17 massacred at party by drug hitmen in Mexico

Suspected drug cartel hitmen stormed a private party and killed 17 people, including five women, in the northern Mexican city of Torreon yesterday, one of the deadliest attacks in Mexico's war on traffickers, police said.

Gunmen in five SUVs drove up to the party in a walled garden on the outskirts of the city in Coahuila state across from Texas, smashed down the door and opened fire on party-goers just after midnight, Coahuila's prosecutor's office told reporters.

"They came in, opened fire and shot against everything that moved," said an official at the prosecutor's office who declined to be identified.

The early morning attack comes days after a drug gang detonated a car bomb in Ciudad Juarez, killing four people in the first attack of its kind in Mexico's drug war. The attacks signal a major escalation in the cartel crackdown launched by president Felipe Calderon in 2006.

Federal police blamed La Linea, the armed wing of the powerful Juarez cartel, for the car bomb and Mexico's security ministry said it was retaliation for the arrest this week of a cartel member.

In Torreon, it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack but the area, a key transit point along smuggling routes into the United States, is being fought over by the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, and the Zetas gang from north-eastern Mexico.

More than 26,000 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico since Mr Calderon took office, and the violence is worrying Washington and investors in the oil-producing country once known for its political stability.