Torreon Mexico - The death of a female partygoer brought the toll from a weekend birthday massacre to 18, the attorney general's office said on Monday, amid a spike in attacks in northern Mexico.
Gunmen on Sunday fired more than 200 bullets indiscriminately at a party outside Torreon, an industrial city in Coahuila state, bringing the number of victims across the country to at least 58 in just the past weekend.
Investigators did not give an immediate motive for the attack but suspicion fell on the country's warring drug gangs.
Seventeen bodies were found at the blood-stained party hall where the attack took place, including 12 males and five females, and around a dozen injured.
Six wounded were released from hospital and one woman later died, a statement from the Coahuila attorney general's office said on Monday.
This year alone has already seen at least two deadly attacks on bars in Torreon.
Northern border areas have been the worst hit in a wave of drug violence that has seen almost 25,000 killed since President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on organized crime three and a half years ago.
The latest slaughter was reminiscent of an attack in late January when hitmen working for a drug gang opened fire and killed 15 young partygoers in Ciudad Juarez, the country's murder capital.
The Torreon killings also came three days after a first car bomb in Ciudad Juarez killed four people and raised fears that Mexico may be facing new threats in its drug wars. - Sapa-AFP