SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Five people were fatally shot in Jamaica, marking the latest mass shooting on the small island.
Local media reported that the shooting late Monday occurred in the southeastern parish of St. Andrew, where the capital of Kinston is located.
No one has been arrested. It wasn’t immediately clear what led to the shooting.
Jamaica has seen a recent increase in mass shootings, including one where five men were killed at a soccer game in late October in a neighborhood that once struggled with gang violence.
While Jamaica has one of the world’s highest homicide rates among countries with reliable statistics, 53.3 per 100,000 people, killings are down so far this year compared with last year. As of Nov. 23, 1,039 people were reported killed, down from 1,262 reported last year, according to police statistics.
A record 1,683 homicides were reported in 2009 on the island of 2.8 million people.
Much of the violence in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean is blamed on guns illegally smuggled from the United States.
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