Armed gang sealed emergency exits of venue before setting fire to entrance hall in worst single act of violence since Amlo took office

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

At least 26 people have been killed and 11 others seriously injured in an arson attack on a Mexican bar, which has highlighted the failure of the country’s new president to quickly bring down record levels of violence.

An armed gang stormed the Caballo Blanco, or White Horse, nightclub in the Mexican city of Coatzacoalcos at around 10pm on Tuesday night. They sealed the emergency exits before setting fire to the entrance hall and making their escape, apparently taking the establishment’s owner with them.

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The attack on the strip club is the worst single act of violence since Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December with the promise that his term would bring a new era of peace.

Though he has put more emphasis on crime prevention and creating economic opportunities, López Obrador has done little to change the basic outline of the failed anti-cartel strategy he inherited from his predecessors, rooted in reliance on operations by the army and navy.

He disappointed human rights organizations and security experts by creating a new permanent crime-fighting force largely from military recruits and putting it under military control.

The president described last night’s attack in Coatzacoalcos, a gritty Gulf coast city focused on the oil industry, as “very, very sad” in his daily early morning press conference.

López Obrador promised a rigorous investigation would “get to the bottom” of the case that, he underlined, had two angles.

“One is that it is regrettable that organized crime acts in this way. It is the most inhuman thing possible,” he said. “The other, which should also be condemned, is the collusion of the authorities. If we don’t at least separate off the authorities from the criminals we will not get anywhere.”

López Obrador said there was evidence that the attackers included an alleged local cartel operator identified as Ricardo “N”, with the alias La Loca, who had recently been captured but then released.

Though López Obrador initially suggested this release was due to local level corruption, the state attorney general’s office hit back with a comuniqué insisting La Loca had been the responsibility of the federal authorities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Relatives and friends of victims embrace each other outside the general prosecutor’s office in Veracruz, on 28 August. Photograph: Victoria Razo/AFP/Getty Images

Security experts have long said that corruption – at all levels of government – helped ensure the failure of a military-led offensive against organized crime launched in 2006, which instead sparked the extreme violence still tormenting Mexico today.

The attack took place nearly eight years after 52 people were killed after gunmen burst into a casino in the northern city of Monterrey and set it ablaze.

That attack was widely blamed on local authorities turning a blind eye to the group’s extortion.

This time, the governor of the state of Veracruz, where Coatzacoalcos is located, said early evidence suggested the attack was motivated by efforts to sell drugs at the bar. Photographs from the scene showed the bodies of naked women lying between toppled tables and chairs.

“Coatzacoalcos today has a situation in which different groups want to sell their drugs in these kinds of places and fight between each other,” the governor, Cuitláhuac García, told Radio Fórmula. “But this time it looks like one group was pressuring the bar because the owner was kidnapped.”