Armed men broke into a high school student party in Mexico's northern border city of Ciudad Juárez in the early hours of Sunday 31 January, killing 16 teenagers and young adults and wounding at least another 14. The gunmen drove up to the house in several cars and began shooting at people from outside the property before moving inside, and pursued some of the youngsters trying to escape.

Police have arrested a man suspected of taking part in the shooting who claims that the party was attacked because members of a rival gang were said to be in attendance. The parents of the victims, most aged between 15 and 20, said their children were not involved in criminal activity. In the past, gangs at the service of criminal organisations have attacked parties, reunions and funerals in Ciudad Juárez. In such cases, the majority of victims and perpetrators of gun violence are young males.

Ciudad Juárez, a city of 1.5 million people across the river from El Paso, Texas (US) is the scene of a vicious ongoing turf war between rival cartels. Two of Mexico's most powerful drug gangs have been battling for control of the city and the drug-smuggling route into the US. According to media reports, in 2009 more than 2,500 people were killed in drug-related homicides in Ciudad Juárez; about one third of the more than 7,000 people killed in drug-related violence in Mexico last year.

Although 9,000 soldiers and federal police were sent to Ciudad Juárez, the effort has done little to curb the violence and in some instances it has exacerbated the conflict. According to Amnesty International there are increasing reports of serious human rights violations, such as enforced disappearance, unlawful killings and arbitrary detention being committed by members of the Mexican military.

Mexican IANSA member Héctor Guerra said: “90% of the firearms recovered last year by Mexican authorities originated from US gun sellers. American weak gun laws make it too easy for gun traffickers to buy weapons in Texas or Arizona and smuggle them across the border. The US needs to reinstate the 1994 assault weapon ban and strengthen its regulation on guns dealers. Otherwise the steady flow of US guns to Mexico will continue and many of those weapons will end up in the hands of armed men like the ones who killed the teenagers in Ciudad Juárez.”