7 Dead in Shooting in Mexican Resort Town

MEXICO CITY — Seven men have been killed in a shooting attack at a bar in Mexico's Caribbean coast resort city of Playa del Carmen, authorities said Monday.State and local police said the attack occurred late Sunday at the "Las Virginias" bar in a low-income section relatively far from the beachside tourist zone. Six men were found shot to death in the bar, and another died at a local hospital.One man was wounded but survived the attack. He told police he was drinking beer with friends when gunshots broke out. The attackers have not yet been identified.Playa del Carmen is located on the coast facing the island of Cozumel, Mexico's leading cruise ship destination. Once a quiet fishing and ferry town, Playa del Carmen has grown exponentially in the last two decades, with lower-income neighborhoods springing up on the inland side of the coastal highway.The resort is midway between Cancun, to the north, and Tulum, to the south, in the coastal state of Quintana Roo, which has seen homicides more than double in the last year, with 688 killings in the first 11 months of 2018, compared to 322 in the same period of 2017. At that rate, Quintana Roo could end 2018 with a homicide rate of about 50 per 100,000, on a par with El Salvador.  Continue reading...