At least five people were shot dead in central Mexico City, said the local security secretariat. Local media suspected the attack, which happened late Friday night at the town hall in Miguel Hidalgo, to be linked to organised crime. 

Police responding to an alert found “five people on the ground with gunshot wounds,” a statement said, reports AFP. 

Three men died at the scene, while the other two succumbed to their injuries at a nearby hospital, the security secretariat said. 

Local media reports said one of the victims was a member of the local Union Tepito cartel but city authorities have not confirmed this.

Despite growing drug cartel violence in Mexico over the last decade, shootings and multiple killings are rare in the capital compared to other areas of the country.

However, the city was shocked by an attack in June last year on its security chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, by heavily armed gunmen who killed two of his bodyguards and a passerby. Garcia Harfuch, who was wounded, blamed the attack on the powerful Jalisco New Generation drug cartel.

More than 300,000 people have been murdered since Mexico deployed the military to fight the drug cartels in 2006, with most of the killings blamed on organized crime.