A wave of drug-related killings claimed the lives of 33 people in Mexico's violence-torn northern border states, authorities said Monday.
The deaths included eight people who were massacred in the early morning hours in a bar in the border city of Ciudad Juarez by gunmen who killed the owner and his wife and then sprayed customers with automatic rifle fire, the local prosecutor's office said.
Four people were seriously injured in the attack.
In another mass killing, heavily armed men in black assaulted a house in Praxedis, 60 kilometers (36 miles) from Ciudad Juarez just across the border from El Paso, Texas, killing six people, prosecutors said.
Two youths, aged 20 and 25, were gunned down in the afternoon in the center of Ciudad Juarez, the country's most violent city where almost 1,300 people have been killed since the start of the year.
Other killings reported in various localities around the northern state of Chihuahua, of which Ciudad Juarez is the capital, brought the death toll to 29 since Sunday.
Four other people were killed in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon in a clash with police and soldiers, the state prosecutor's office said.
Nearly 10,000 people have died in suspected drug violence, particularly in northern border areas, since the start of 2008, amid a nationwide military crackdown on Mexico's powerful cartels.
{{/usCountry}}Nearly 10,000 people have died in suspected drug violence, particularly in northern border areas, since the start of 2008, amid a nationwide military crackdown on Mexico's powerful cartels.
{{/usCountry}}President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 36,000 troops across the country in a controversial clampdown on organized crime.