At least 23 people died after an attack at a bar in Mexico’s southern port city of Coatzacoalcos caused a fire, officials said on Wednesday.
The attackers started a fire that ripped through the bar, killing eight women and 15 men, and injuring 13 other people who were being treated at hospitals for serious injuries.
The state prosecutor’s office in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz said the police were searching for the attackers.
The attack, along with the killing of 19 people in the western city of Uruapan this month, renewed fears that the public, theatrical violence of the 2006-12 drug war may have returned.
Photos from the scene showed tables and chairs turn upside down, apparently as people tried to flee.
Gov. Cuitláhuac García Jiménez of Veracruz suggested that a gang dispute had been behind the attack.
“In Veracruz, criminal gangs are no longer tolerated,” Mr. Garcia said of the attack, adding that the police, the armed forces and the newly formed National Guard were part of the investigation.
The state police identified the establishment in Coatzacoalcos (koh-AHTzah-koh-AHL-kos) as the Caballo Blanco bar. The bar is in a storefront on a busy commercial street in Coatzacoalcos, a city whose main industry is oil and oil refining.
The fire may have been started with gasoline bombs. The blaze occurred almost eight years to the day after a fire at a casino in the northern city of Monterrey killed 52 people.
The Zetas drug cartel staged that 2011 attack to enforce demands for protection payments. The Zetas, now splintered, have also been active in Coatzacoalcos.
