Mexico Mass Kidnapping Has Local Officials and Residents Stunned

A mass abduction took place earlier this week where 11 young people were taken from an after-hours Mexico City bar has relatives and locals stunned.

The abduction happened sometime between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. Sunday morning at the Zona Rosa bar. The area is relatively quiet, according to reports, making this mass kidnapping even more disturbing.

The bar is located near Paseo del la Reforma, a main boulevard, and is less than two blocks away from the U.S. Embassy.

"How could so many people have disappeared, just like that, in broad daylight?" said the mother of one of victims, Sanchez Garcia. "The police say they don't have them, so what, the earth just opened up and swallowed them?"

Parents and loved ones marched on Thursday morning from the Interior Department building to the city's main square, then later held a protest outside Zona Rosa afterward.

Protestors demanded justice and pushed to see surveillance video.

Official statements from local police said Tepido, the tough downtown neighborhood where the victims lived, could have seen as many at 16 abductions that night, even though only 11 missing-persons reports were filed.

"Tepido is the center of black market activities in the city, where guns, drugs, stolen goods and contraband are widely sold."

According to the Huffington Post a number of police officers in a special intervention unit, many of them armed, blocked off the area around the bar to conduct a thorough search Thursday night.

There are no accounts of motives or what was the catalyst behind the search as of Friday morning.

This incident shines a particularly harsh light on Mexico City's nightlife and entertainment industry, as it comes less than a month after Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of civil rights activist Malcolm X, was fatally beaten in the downtown area.

Shabazz was buried on Thursday at Ferncliff Cemetery.

Two waiters were arrested in connection to his death.