8 killed in clash between drug cartels in Mexico

A police officer stands guard at the entrance to a gym where four people were shot dead in the Tepito neighborhood in Mexico City, Friday, June 7, 2013. Two masked gunmen stormed into the Body Extreme gym on Thursday night yelling “everyone hit the floor” and opened fire, in the Mexico City neighborhood that is home to the area’s biggest black market, authorities said. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said preliminary investigations indicated the killings were part of a “personal grudge”, and denied that the kind of large-scale drug cartel executions that have bloodied other parts of Mexico have arrived in Mexico City. AP Photo/Gabriela Sanchez

ACAPULCO, Mexico—Authorities say eight people were killed in a clash between two organized crime groups in southern Guerrero state.

Guerrero state prosecutors spokesman Jorge Valdes says the two groups of gunmen opened fire on each other Thursday outside the city of Coyuca de Benitez, about 30 miles north of the resort city of Acapulco.

Valdes wouldn’t identify the two groups but local media reported they were members of the Knights Templar drug cartel and a rival drug gang, the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

The Knights Templar cartel, which controls much of Michoacan, has been fighting rivals along its borders with other states including Guerrero, where a variety of smaller cartels control drug-smuggling and other criminal activities.