With few months to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which Mexico will co-host with the United States and Canada in June, a deadly attack at a community football game that left 11 people dead has reignited fears about security in one of the tournament’s host nations.
The murder of 11 people at a football game has sparked deep anger in the central Mexican town of Loma de Flores, where sport is promoted as a way of keeping young people safe from drug cartels.
“We no longer know where to find peace,” Norma Barron, one of the promoters of the league that was attacked on Sunday, told AFP.
An afternoon of football, thronged by families, was drawing to a close when armed men stormed the grounds near the city of Salamanca in Guanajuato state on Sunday.
The gunmen arrived in at least three vehicles, Barron told AFP.
A preliminary investigation pointed to a settling of scores between two powerful criminal gangs.
Barron, an activist with a collective that searches for tens of thousands of Mexicans who have vanished, many of them kidnapped and killed by cartels, was in the southern state of Oaxaca at the time of the attack.