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Gunmen killed 14 people in the northern Mexican border state of Chihuahua overnight on Friday, including three women and two students.
Ten of the victims were killed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's "crime capital" which sits across the border from El Paso, Texas, the office of the Chihuahua's deputy prosecutor said.
Early on Saturday, a group of gunmen attacked a couple traveling in a car with young children. The attackers forced the family out of the car, separated the parents from the children and sprayed them all with bullets.
The lifeless body of a woman bearing signs of violence and concealed under old tires was also found lying on a street in Ciudad Juarez.
Seven other men, including two students about 20 years of age, were also killed overnight.
A shootout between soldiers and gunmen that lasted over an hour killed two suspected criminals in Jimenez, a town in the south of Chihuahua.
In central Chihuahua, one man was found dead in Camargo and a woman was shot to death inside her small business in Belisarius, according to police reports.
Rival drug cartels are fighting deadly battles over lucrative drug routes in the state, which shares a long border with the United States.
Drug-related crime has left more than 15,000 dead in the past three years in Mexico, despite a nationwide clampdown on the growing violence involving the deployment of some 50,000 government troops.
