Honduran President Xiomara Castro yesterday imposed a nighttime curfew in the northern city of Choloma, where 11 people were massacred the previous day by hitmen hired by drug traffickers.

As of yesterday Sunday, a “special night traffic ban was imposed in Tsoloma from 21:00 to 04:00”, the president said via Twitter.

The decision comes after 11 people were riddled with bullets in a pool hall in the city of nearly 300,000 people, near San Pedro Sula, an industrial center in the north of the Central American country.

Measures were imposed in Tsoloma and San Pedro Sula in order for the authorities to “guarantee security following the barbaric and merciless terrorist attack (…) by hired killers” acting on behalf of “drug traffickers who operate with impunity in the Sula Valley drug corridor” “, added Mrs. Castro.

“Ten men and a woman” were killed, police spokesman Miguel Martinez told AFP.

Photos of the victims’ bodies lying in pools of blood on the pool hall floor have been circulating on social media sites.

According to eyewitnesses, unknown persons armed with automatic weapons entered the venue where a birthday party was in progress and opened fire.

The massacre came five days after 48 women were killed in a clash between inmates at a prison near the capital. According to authorities, inmates belonging to the “mara” (gang) of Barrio 18 broke into a ward where rivals of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang were located and opened fire, before setting it on fire.