A 21-year-old American one of five men shot dead by the Mexican army in the northern border town of Nuevo Laredo. Gustavo Suárez and seven other men were returning from a night out when the truck they were traveling in was shot early Sunday morning.

The other fatalities have been identified as Gustavo Pérez, Wilberto Mata, Jonatán Aguilar and Alejandro Trujillo. A sixth victim, Luis Gerardo, was shot at least twice and remained in serious condition at a local hospital. Alejandro Pérez also revealed that the soldiers forced him to give a videotaped confession claiming that the group was responsible for the shooting.

“They said if I wanted to live, I had to say it was our fault.”said.

Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee director Raymundo Ramos told DailyMail that 12 soldiers were present during the shooting and that four confessed to firing their weapons. However, none of the soldiers have been arrested.

Mexico’s Minister of National Defense issued a statement on Tuesday saying that the soldiers heard shots and approached the truck which had no license plates or lights.

The driver of the vehicle is said to have accelerated “abruptly and evasively”. The speeding van crashed into a parked vehicle and the soldiers began firing when they heard the crash.

This is according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press the driver disobeyed the soldiers’ orders to come to a complete stop. Three of the bodies were found in the vehicle and two on a sidewalk.

The killings in the border town led to a violent confrontation between friends, family and soldiers. Video footage from a passerby shows how the Suárez’s father was visibly heartbroken and attacked a soldier when the military tried to remove the van from the scene.

A melee ensued in which two soldiers were brutally attacked by civilians. One of the soldiers was kicked repeatedly while lying on the ground next to the truck. At one point, multiple shots were fired, causing people to run for cover, but it was unclear who fired them.

Nuevo Laredo is dominated by the Northeast Cartel, an offshoot of the former Los Zetas Cartel.. Soldiers and Marines have been regularly attacked by heavily armed cartel hitmen in Nuevo Laredo. The city has also been the scene of human rights abuses by the military in the past.

In 2021, the Mexican Navy said on Monday it turned over 30 Marines to civilian prosecutors to be tried in the cases of people who went missing during anti-crime operations in Nuevo Laredo in 2014.

The Marines were charged with arresting suspicious suspects, some of whom were never heard from again. In 2018, dozens of people disappeared in Nuevo Laredo.