At least 30 people died in a staggering surge in drug-related violent crime in Mexico rocking 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 the government uses police and soldiers in an attempt 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.

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

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 Defense 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 that the attackers ‘struck the side of a vehicle, resulting in a civilian death.’

Monterrey, a prosperous city and […]