Mexican Gangsters Shoot Dead 14 Students

10:54am UK, Monday February 01, 2010

Tim Hewage, Sky News Online

Suspected drug cartel gunmen have shot dead 14 teenage students at a party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

The victims were all high school students aged between 15 and 20 years old.

Another 17 were wounded in the shooting, some critically.

The students had been celebrating the birthday of a classmate when the gunmen arrrived in the early hours of Sunday morning.

It is not immediately clear what the motive for the massacre was or who the attackers were.

But drug hitmen are known to have attacked house parties in Juarez previously, searching for rivals.

And police have reported that some teenagers have been involved in kidnapping others.

Some 2,650 people were killed in drug violence in last year and cartel murders have rocketed since the start of 2010.

A military crackdown on rival cartels in Mexico has fuelled a surge in drug violence that has killed more than 17,000 people over the past three years.

Mexico is the key transit route for US-bound cocaine from South America and a major supplier of marijuana and heroin

Oh God, fourteen teenagers....How awful.