11 Killed at Guanajuato Soccer Game!
Mexico City, Jan 25 (EFE).-
A shooting targeting people gathered at a soccer game in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato killed at least 11 and injured 12, authorities said Sunday.
The incident occurred around 5.30pm local time in the community of Loma de Flores in the municipality of Salamanca.
Salamanca Mayor César Prieto confirmed in a public statement that 11 people were killed, 10 at the scene and one more in the hospital, and another 12 were injured, including a woman and a child.
The shooting happened at the end of the event on a soccer field, “where people were socializing and an armed group arrived and attacked them,” Prieto said.
“This incident adds to a wave of violence that we are unfortunately suffering in the state, and particularly in Salamanca,” warned the mayor, while asking President Claudia Sheinbaum and Guanajuato Governor Libia García for support to “restore peace, tranquility, and security” to the municipality.
Five people were murdered on Saturday in the community of Cuatro de Altamira, one more in San Vicente de Flores, and last week there was a threat involving an explosive device outside the Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) facilities in Salamanca, which was deactivated with the intervention of the federal government, Prieto recounted.
The mayor emphasized that Salamanca is a city that “has given much to the country,” as it houses a Pemex refinery and is a “driving force for development.”
In that regard, he lamented the existence of criminal groups that seek to “subjugate the authorities,” which he warned “they will not achieve.”
The Guanajuato Attorney General’s Office reported the start of its investigation into the incident and specified that six of the 12 injured remain under medical care.
The agency also strongly condemned the attack and expressed its solidarity with the victims’ families.
This is not the first armed attack during a soccer match in Salamanca. In April 2025, an armed group stormed a soccer field in the community of Cárdenas and killed four people, and a month earlier, three died in a shooting at a soccer field in Zapote Negro.
Furthermore, this is one of the worst massacres in recent years in Guanajuato, second only to the one that occurred in June 2015 in the municipality of Irapuato, where 12 people died and 20 were injured in a shooting at a patron saint festival for the feast day of St. John the Baptist.
Guanajuato was the state with the most homicides in Mexico in 2015, with more than 2,500 cases registered, according to government data. EFE
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