{"id":8193,"date":"2025-06-02T10:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T10:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/02\/fire-kills-12-people-who-were-reportedly-locked-up-inside-drug-rehab-center-in-mexico\/"},"modified":"2025-06-02T10:56:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T10:56:15","slug":"fire-kills-12-people-who-were-reportedly-locked-up-inside-drug-rehab-center-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/02\/fire-kills-12-people-who-were-reportedly-locked-up-inside-drug-rehab-center-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire kills 12 people who were reportedly locked up inside drug rehab center in Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A fire in a drug rehabilitation center in the violence-plagued Mexican state of Guanajuato <\/a><\/span>killed 12 people and injured at least three others, authorities said Sunday.<\/p>\n

The fire broke out early Sunday in the town of San Jose Iturbe, where the municipal government said it was still investigating what caused the deadly blaze.<\/p>\n

“We express our solidarity with the families of those who have been killed while they tried to overcome addictions,” the municipal government said in a statement, adding that it will help to pay for the funeral expenses of those killed.<\/p>\n

Experts were gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses to establish “the reasons for the tragic incident,” the Guanajuato state prosecutor’s office said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mexican media outlets reported that the victims of the fire had been locked up inside the rehab center.<\/p>\n

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A woman lits candles at the rehabilitation center where 12 people died due to a fire in San Jose Iturbide community, Guanajuato state, Mexico on June 1, 2025.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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MARIO ARMAS\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Mexico’s privately run drug rehabilitation centers are often abusive, clandestine, unregulated and underfunded. They have been the targets of similar attacks<\/a><\/span> in the past.<\/p>\n

The industrial and agricultural state of Guanajuato has for years been the scene of a bloody turf battle between the Jalisco New Generation cartel<\/a><\/span> and a local gang, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato has the highest number of homicides of any state in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Just last month, investigators found 17 bodies<\/a><\/span> during a search for missing persons in an abandoned house in Guanajuato. Days before that, seven people, including children, were gunned down<\/a><\/span> in the same region.<\/p>\n

Mexican drug gangs have killed suspected street-level dealers from rival gangs sheltering at rehab facilities in the past. Officials also believe cartels sometimes execute patients who refuse to join their ranks.<\/p>\n

In April, gunmen shot up a drug rehab clinic in the troubled Sinaloa state, killing at least nine people. <\/p>\n

In July 2022,\u00a0six people were shot dead<\/a><\/span>\u00a0at a drug rehab center near the western Mexican city of Guadalajara. Two years before that, heavily armed men\u00a0stormed a drug rehab center<\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the central city of Irapuato and killed 27 people.<\/p>\n

In 2010, 19 people were killed in an attack on a rehab center in Chihuahua, a city in northern Mexico. More than a dozen other attacks on such facilities occurred in the decade between those massacres.<\/p>\n

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

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