Gunmen storm hospital, kill patient and 2 police officers in Mexico

Gunmen stormed a hospital in Mexico Monday to attack a man recovering from a gunshot wound, killing him and two police officers, authorities said.

The attackers shot the man more than 10 times in the central town of Atlixco, then killed police who tried to stop them from fleeing, the public security secretariat in Puebla state said.

“The victim initially entered the hospital early Sunday morning on his own, since he had been injured by a gunshot wound at a gathering,” Puebla security secretary Daniel Ivan Cruz told a news conference.

“Early Monday morning, the person was killed by several men who entered the hospital,” he said.

“After hearing the emergency call and arriving at the scene, the police came under fire and died on the spot,” he added.

Investigators were looking into whether the patient — who was around 30 years old — was involved in illegal activities, the security secretariat said.

Atlixco, a popular tourist destination, receives thousands of visitors at this time of year for the Day of the Dead festival.

Puebla has been plagued by brutal violence before.  In April, authorities in the state found seven bodies with five of them decapitated and another completely dismembered — with a message on each corpse — in a car left in the middle of traffic on a main expressway. In 2022, authorities said gunmen “executed” nine people in an attack on a house in Atlixco.

Spiraling violence, much of it linked to drug trafficking and gangs, has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since 2006.

On Monday, gunmen killed five members of the same family in a house in a suburb of Acapulco, the former beachside playground of the rich and famous now blighted by criminal violence, prosecutors said.

Two other people were wounded in the attack in the southern state of Guerrero, which has endured years of bloodshed linked to turf wars between drug cartels.

On Friday, a local leader of the Mexican folk saint cult “La Santa Muerte” was gunned down at an altar to the skeletal figure. Two other people were killed and eight injured in the attack in the city of Leon, in Guanajuato state.