A 12-year-old boy was fatally wounded on a beach in Cancún on Sunday by aggressors who intended to shoot at rival drug dealers, authorities said.

The attack occurred on a beach behind Hotel Riu in the hotel zone of the Caribbean coast resort city. The boy, identified as Santiago T.M. in media reports, was shot in the stomach or chest and subsequently died in hospital.

The Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office (FGE) said in a statement that “first investigations” indicated that the attackers reached the beach from the water on board a jet ski. The perpetrators also reportedly fled the scene on the jet ski.

The FGE said that the aggressors shot at “people presumably in a dispute over drug sales, but injured, without being their target, the minor who was with his family.”

“The authorities arrived immediately and transported the minor to hospital where he unfortunately lost his life,” it added.

The FGE said that “the members of the affected family are of Mexican nationality” and live in the municipality of Benito Juárez, where Cancún is located.

“The State Attorney General’s Office, in collaboration with the members of the Organization for the Construction of Peace and Security in Quintana Roo, is working to bring to justice the person or persons responsible for this crime,” the FGE said.

Disputes between gangs over drug dealing and other criminal activities have intensified in Quintana Roo in recent months, the newspaper Reforma reported.

In April, four men were killed in a shootout at the Hotel Fiesta Americana Condesa in Cancún, while two alleged drug dealers were gunned down near Costa Mujeres Beach north of Cancún in December.

With reports from La Jornada and Reforma