Cancun Newspaper Offices Bombed

I’ll start by saying that these newspaper offices are situated well downtown and nowhere near any Cancun Hotels, the perpetrators are believed to be members of drug cartels who didn’t take kindly to the current reporting of their activities.

The bombings took place last night around 10pm in co-ordinated simultaneous attacks and were carried out against the Newspapers Por Esto and Que Quintana Roo Se Entere. The ‘bombs’ were not bombs in the sense that many people will think, they were fragmentation grenades.

As can be seen by the picture on the left, these are small devices and do not cause a lot of damage, although I wouldn’t liked to have been near it when it went off.

At the Por Esto offices there were two grenades which exploded against the wall of the building. According to eyewitnesses one of the bombers injured himself superficially but escaped via getaway vehicle.

At the offices of Que Quintana Roo Se Entere a single grenade damaged a window and a balcony and, unfortunately, a passer by was treated for minor wounds to his throat.

Pedro Ramirez Violante, of the public prosecutor’s office in Quintana Roo, blamed the attacks on suspected organized crime groups.

He said the attacks should serve as a signal to publishers to reinforce their security.

But he said federal laws would guarantee the “security of the mass media.”

“We are going to guarantee the freedom of expression of mass media and we will offer the necessary security for them,” he said.

Local media offices posted armed guards around their facilities.