Hooded assailants opened fire on a clutch of mourners outside a morgue in northern Honduras today, killing eight people and wounding four others, authorities said.
Most of the victims were members of a family who had come to the morgue in San Pedro Sula to retrieve the body of a man gunned down the day before, they said.
In the grip of soaring gang and drug violence, Honduras has the world's highest murder rate -- 79 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to monitors at the National University.
San Pedro Sula coroner Hector Hernandez said the gunmen pulled up in two vehicles and opened fire on a group of people waiting outside to take possession of the body of Jose Luis Terrero.
Terrero was killed yesterday in Puerto Cortes, 300 kilometers north of Tegucigalpa. San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second largest city, is 240 kilometers north of the capital.
