After a gang of masked gunmen burst into a rehabilitation center in Tijuana and methodically assassinated 13 patients, El Universal reports that the Sinaloa cartel is behind the massacre.
According to Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno, minutes after the attack, an unknown voice interrupted the police radio frequency channel and announced that the incident was a “test of what Juárez is made of,” threatening to kill one person for each of the 134 tons of marijuana confiscated earlier in the month. After assuring his listeners that this was “just the beginning,” the mysterious broadcaster played a narcocorrido, a kind of Mexican ballad that glorifies the drug trafficking lifestyle. In accordance with previous government statements, Moreno blamed the attack, as well as the subsequent radio announcement, on “collaborators of [Sinaloa cartel leader] Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán” The incident marked the third most deadly act of violence to take place in an addiction treatment center in Northern Mexico in the past year, with a similar attack occurring at a clinic in Ciudad Juárez in 2009.