Five people were shot dead in central Mexico City, the local security secretariat said Saturday, a rare attack in the capital and likely linked to organized crime, according to local media.

The attack occurred late Friday at the town hall in Miguel Hidalgo, one of the most prosperous districts of Mexico City.

Police responding to an alert found "five people on the ground with gunshot wounds," according to a statement.

Medical services certified three men dead at the scene while the other two were transferred to a nearby hospital where they later died due to the seriousness of their injuries, the security secretariat said.

Local media reports said one of the victims was a member of the local Union Tepito cartel but city authorities have not confirmed this. 

Despite growing drug cartel violence in Mexico over the last decade, shootings and multiple killings are rare in the capital compared to other areas of the country.

However, the city was shocked by an attack in June last year on its security chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, by heavily armed gunmen who killed two of his bodyguards and a passerby. Garcia Harfuch, who was wounded, blamed the attack on the powerful Jalisco New Generation drug cartel.

More than 300,000 people have been murdered since Mexico deployed the military to fight the drug cartels in 2006, with most of the killings blamed on organized crime.