MONTERREY, Mexico – Alberto Martinez Alvarado, 30, a former security guard at the casino, was on his way home from work on Thursday when he saw the fire. He said the fire had started at a time when there would have been few people inside but said the casino could hold hundreds, perhaps 1,000 people.
State police officials quoted survivors as saying armed men burst into the casino, apparently to rob it, and began dousing the premises with fuel from tanks they brought with them. The officials were not authorized to be quoted by name for security reasons.
- With shouts and profanities, the attackers told the customers and employees to get out. But many terrified customers and employees fled further inside the building.
- The death toll climbed as workers continued to pull bodies out of a burned casino in northern Mexico, where gunmen spread gasoline and ignited a fire that trapped and killed at least 53 gamblers and employees.
- Family members gathered at the caution tape outside the Casino Royale after the Thursday afternoon fire in the northern industrial city of Monterrey, some crying and others yelling at police for providing no information. Later they were allowed to view bodies in the morgue to help identify the victims.
- Francisco Tamayo, 28, of Monterrey, said he and family members looked at some 40 bodies in search of his mother, Sonia de la Pena, 47, who loved to visit the casino and was there on average four days a week. They had yet to find her.
- Governor Rodrigo Medina told the Televisa network late on Thursday that the death toll had reached 53. The fire in a city that has seen a surge in drug cartel-related violence represented one of the deadliest attacks on an entertainment centre in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006.
- Calderon tweeted that the attack was "an abhorrent act of terror and barbarism" that requires "all of us to persevere in the fight against these unscrupulous criminal bands."
Attorney General Leon Adrian de la Garza said a drug cartel was apparently responsible for the attack, though he didn't name which one.
It was the second time in three months that the Casino Royale was targeted. Gunmen struck it and three other casinos on May 25, spraying the building with bullets, but no were reported injured in that attack.
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