Four men died in simultaneous assassination attempts in two malls in the southwestern Colombian city of Cali Thursday.
The attacks took place Thursday afternoon in the Chipichape and Palmetto Plaza malls located respectively in the north and the south of the city.
In Chipichape, a man was assassinated while in a barber shop. The brother of the victim consequently attacked one of the assassins who had to be taken to the hospital where he died from his injuries. A second assassin was arrested by police.
In Palmetto, armed men assassinated two men. The suspected assassins were arrested by police.
The Palmetto attack is the second in two years; in 2011, two men were assassinated in the same food court of the mall.
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Cali and its surrounding Valle del Cauca department have been subjected to a war waged between the locally-based “Los Rastrojos” drug trafficking organization and their rivals, “Los Urabeños” from the northwest of the country. According to local newspaper El Pais, the two shootings are related to the drug gang war.