Banners have appeared in the city of Chihuahua, north Mexico, claiming to name those responsible for the massacre of 15 people in a bar last week.
In the early hours of Monday morning, two "narcomantas" or drug banners were hung in the city, reports Blog del Narco. They said:
To the people of Chihuahua, the intellectual authors of the Bar Colorado massacre are Javier Llamas (Harry Potter), Jesus Salas (El Chuyin), Alejandro Areas (El Grande) brother of El Indio, Benjamin Valeriano (El Cachilas, Uriel Canton and Jose Borunda Cadenas.
Sincerely, Concerned Society.
On Friday night, seven gunmen entered El Colorado bar in Chihuahua. They asked for information about two people, but when those in the bar reportedly failed to tell them what they wanted to know, they opened fire, killing 15. There were two survivors, who are being kept under police protection.
InSight Crime Analysis
There are suggestions that the shooting may have been linked to the Juarez Cartel. According to reports, the police are carrying out operations in Villa Ahumada, a town between Chihuahua and Juarez that has been hard hit by drug violence.
The state authorities have said that the gunmen were targeting people in the bar that night who were involved in retail drug dealing. The fact the gunmen used high-powered automatic weapons reinforces the theory that the killing was part of score-settling between criminal groups. There were also two journalists among the dead.
Chihuahua authorities said that one of the victims, a waitress called Nora Santiago Hernandez, alias "La Negra," had been romantically linked to "El Indio," who was named in the banner. He was killed in an October 2008 massacre on a Chihuahua bar called Rio Rosas, in which 11 died.
The city of Chihuahua has been the location of a number of massacres carried out in bars and nightspots. As well as the Rio Rosas shooting, nine people died in a massacre in another bar in February this year.
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