In a news conference, officials said it was the work of 'organized crime' meaning drug cartels but it did not say which gang it suspected.

Yet as the country woke to news of the tragedy on Friday, people were disgusted but not surprised.Īs in so much of the violence in this conflict, it is hard to fathom the motives of the criminal hit squads.

The bloody casino attack would have been inconceivable in Mexico five years ago. But the promise of more fighting back from the government offered little comfort to Mexico's shaken public, which has watched cartels steadily escalate their tactics during the past decade. 'These deplorable acts require all of us to persevere in the fight against those unscrupulous criminal gangs.' The President's message reaffirmed his commitment to the all-out war against drug cartels he has waged since taking power in December 2006. with the victims of this abhorrent act of terror and barbarity,' he wrote in a statement. President Felipe Calderón quickly underlined the terrorist nature of the attack, whose victims appeared to mostly be innocent civilians with no connection to the drug war. (See photos of Mexico's ongoing drug violence.) By Friday morning, police had counted 52 dead dozens more were in hospitals. When emergency crews finally smashed down the walls to rescue the survivors, corpses littered the game tables, stairwells and bathrooms. As the building burst into flames, most of the victims choked to death in trapped corners, while others burned as they tried to escape or were crushed by the stampede. They heard gunfire and explosions that they thought were grenades and saw men pour gasoline over the machines and set them alight. The scene quickly descended into psychosis and panic, as the crowd stampeded from the games into bathrooms, stairwells and a blocked emergency exit. 25, while about 150 croupiers and customers mostly women played bingo, roulette and slots.

While their victims used to be limited to gangsters and police, now they are increasingly civilians, with catastrophic consequences.ĬTV footage shows a gang of eight gunmen descending on the casino, located in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, on Thursday afternoon, Aug. The massacre illustrates how Mexico's drug cartels have steadily raised the stakes in trying to outbid one another as the most brutal player in the conflict. But the survivors pulled out of the city's burning Casino Royale described the truly hellish dimensions of the worst act of violence in the city in recent memory. Follow Monterrey saw piles of severed heads and corpses hanging from overpasses, it was hard to imagine a more gruesome attack in Mexico's industrial heartland.

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