Mexico drug violence kills 30

MONTERREY, Mexico: At least 30 people have died in Mexico after drug-related violent crime rocked the cities of Monterrey and Guadalajara, and the northern state of Chihuahua, police said Saturday.

The attacks were the latest deadly violence gripping Mexico's war on drugs, as the country's various criminal cartels struggle over turf and attempts of the police and soldiers to crush them.

In Chihuahua state, 11 people were slain in several separate murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's deadliest city, across from the US city of El Paso, Texas between late Friday and Saturday, authorities said.

Police said gunmen also shot dead five other men in an additional group killing on a highway between Chihuahua city, the state capital, and Ciudad Juarez.

Separately, around 4:00 am (1000 GMT), a special unit of soldiers and police known as the Immediate Reaction Group stopped two suspicious vehicles in a suburb of the industrial city of Monterrey, the Secretariat of Defence said.

The car occupants responded by pulling out weapons and opening fire.

"Seven alleged aggressors lost their lives" in the shootout, the secretariat said in a statement, adding the attackers "struck the side of a vehicle, resulting in a civilian death."

Meanwhile, at around the same time an unknown assailant threw a fragmentation grenade at the porch of a crowded bar in the western city of Guadalajara, police told reporters.

Gunmen opened fire at the bar, which was packed with customers, then fled in several cars.

Three women and three men were killed in the attack and more than 20 were wounded, police said.

ORIGINAL SOURCE