Armed assailants kill 11 during assault at Mexican soccer game

Armed attackers fired upon spectators following a soccer match in central Mexico, resulting in 11 deaths and over a dozen injuries in an area notorious for violence attributed to organised criminal networks, according to local officials.

Masked gunmen burst into a local soccer field shortly after the Sunday game in Salamanca, a modest city with around 160,000 residents in Guanajuato state.

Authorities reported that 10 victims perished at the location, with one more succumbing in medical care. Twelve others sustained injuries, among them a female and a young child.

Mayor Cesar Prieto called on the federal government to assist in reestablishing calm, safety, and order within the locality, pointing to organised crime syndicates as the culprits behind the unrest.

"We face a critical period marked by profound societal disruption. Criminal organisations are attempting to overpower local governance," he stated.

In Salamanca as well, four containers holding human body parts were found on Saturday evening, and in two adjacent neighbourhoods, six individuals lost their lives on the same date.

The previous week brought a bomb alert at a Salamanca facility owned by the state-run oil firm Pemex.

Guanajuato, located in the heart of Mexico, serves as a bustling manufacturing centre and hosts numerous favoured tourist spots, yet it ranks as the nations most lethal state owing to rivalries among gangs, based on government murder data.

A significant portion of the turmoil in Guanajuato stems from clashes between the Santa Rosa de Lima group, involved in fuel siphoning, and the Jalisco New Generation narcotics syndicate, one of the regions most formidable outfits.

Police were actively pursuing the perpetrators.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico claimed that the nations murder rate in 2025 dropped to its lowest in ten years, crediting her governments security approach. Analysts remain sceptical about these numbers.

Offences tied to criminal enterprises, largely connected to narcotics distribution, have taken over 480,000 lives in Mexico since the 2006 offensive against cartels began.

Over 120,000 individuals have vanished, with many believed to have been coerced into cartel service or abducted. Common discoveries in this troubled country include mass burial sites or scattered remains.