Amid fire at a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico's violent plight Guanajuato Authorities said Sunday that 12 people were killed and at least three were injured.

The fire broke out in the town of San Jose Iturbe earlier Sunday, where the city is still investigating the cause of the deadly fire.

"We expressed solidarity with the families of those who were killed when we tried to overcome their addiction," the municipal government said in a statement.

The Guanajuato State Attorney’s Office said experts are collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses to establish “the cause of the tragic incident.”

Mexican media reported that the victims of the fire were locked in a rehabilitation center.

Privately run drug rehabilitation centers in Mexico are often abused, secret, unregulated and underfunded. They've always been Targets similar to attack in the past.

For many years, Guanajuato's industrial and agricultural state has been in Jalisco's new generation cartel There is also a local gang, Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato has the largest number of homicides.

Just last month, investigators found 17 corpses While searching for missing persons in an abandoned house in Guanajuato. In the days before this, seven people, including children Shot In the same area.

In the past, Mexican drug gangs have killed suspected street-level dealers among rival gangs in rehabilitation facilities. Officials also believe that cartels sometimes enforce patients who refuse to join their ranks.

In April, the gunman opened a drug rehabilitation clinic in the dead state of Sinaloa, killing at least nine people.

July 2022, Six people were shot In a drug rehabilitation center near Guadalajara, western Mexico city. Two years before this, armed people Rushed into the drug rehabilitation center In the central city of irapuato, 27 people were killed.

In 2010, 19 people were killed in a rehabilitation center attack in the northern Mexican city of Chihuahua. More than a dozen attacks on such facilities occurred in the decade between these massacres.

France-Pars-Pars contributed to this report.