Gunmen kill six outside Honduras airport

Six people were killed and four wounded by gunmen dressed in black outside an airport in northern Honduras, CNN reports.

The attack occurred in the parking lot of Ramon Villeda Morales International Airport in San Pedro Sula on Friday night.

Darwin Ismael Garcia Nunez, head of airport security, told CNN that eight men in black arrived at a parking lot checkpoint in two vehicles. Garcia said the gunmen forced people out of two other vehicles and shot them. The gunmen then exchanged fire with airport security before fleeing the scene.

According to the Associated Press, local police commissioner Julian Hernandez gave a slightly different version of events, saying that the gunmen were masked and opened fire on four SUVS. Most of the victims were in their 20s, Hernandez said.

AFP reports that the attack occurred just one day after the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras released a study "indicating that the small Central American country of eight million was on course to break world records with its murder rate." According to the Observatory, the country will reach 86 murders per 100,000 inhabitants by the end of the year.