MONTERREY, Mexico
- The dead were mainly mothers and grandmothers, middle-aged women who routinely stopped by the Casino Royale for an afternoon game of bingo or a shot at the slot machines.
At least 52 people were killed on Thursday, when armed men torched the gaming hall located in a busy commercial center of Mexico's wealthiest city. The attack, conducted in broad daylight, was the deadliest to target Mexican civilians in nearly five years of bloody drug warfare.
"Mexico has witnessed one of the most terrible acts of barbarism in memory," President Felipe Calderon said yesterday as he declared three days of national mourning. "Make no mistake: We are not talking about an accident. We are talking about criminals . . . true terrorists."
Twin Mexican scourges stoked the death toll: a drug war that has increasingly engulfed the once-placid industrial hub of Monterrey, and the achingly routine flouting of laws that allowed emergency exits in the casino to be blocked, trapping the panicked housewives and empty-nesters.
As Mexico's best-off and third-largest city, Monterrey was once known as being so calm that drug lords liked to park their families here.
But, in the last two years, the city has become the setting for a brutal turf war between rival drug-trafficking gangs.
Many of the bodies were found in a bathroom, victims of smoke inhalation, said Reynaldo Ramos, head of Monterrey's civil protection agency.
A typical victim was Sonia de la Pena Guerrero, 46, who worked at a funeral home and so loved bingo that she earned "frequent player" points that gave her free meals. She was at the casino for lunch on Thursday. Her family, searching for her, found her car in the casino parking lot.
"This is pure terrorism," daughter Brenda Tamayo, 24, said, before breaking down in tears as she waited outside the Monterrey morgue. Members of the family had given DNA samples to identify de la Pena's body.