Mexico Gunmen Kill 13, Wound 15 at Party in Juarez - BusinessWeek

October 23, 2010, 2:08 PM EDT By Thomas Black

(Updates with interior ministry comment in final paragraph.)

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Gunmen killed at least 13 people and wounded 15 at a house party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, that is besieged by drug- trafficker violence.

Seven of the dead have been identified, and range in age from 16 to 25, and a 9-year-old was among the wounded, according to an e-mailed statement from the state of Chihuahua, where Juarez is the most populous city. There have been no arrests, the statement said.

The gunmen arrived in two vehicles and began shooting at partygoers in two houses in the neighborhood of Horizontes del Sur, according to a preliminary investigation. Authorities received a call related to the incident on an emergency hotline at 10:54 p.m. local time. Police found 70 shell casings at the scene, the statement said.

Juarez has been one of the hardest-hit Mexican cities in a wave of drug-related killings that have exceeded 28,000 since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and deployed military troops to quell organized crime.

Calderon ordered Interior Minister Jose Francisco Blake to help the state and local governments to maintain order in Juarez and the federal attorney general to assist in the investigation, according to an statement from the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of domestic security. The federal government “energetically condemns” the attack, the statement said.

--Editors: Joe Sabo, Theo Mullen.

To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Black in Monterrey at tblack@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Joshua Goodman at jgoodman19@bloomberg.net.

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