At least 15 people have been killed in the past 24 hours in northern Chihuahua state, local officials said, hours after US President Barack Obama said violence in Mexico has gone out of hand.The bodies of five men were found on Saturday in an irrigation ditch outside of Rosales, in the central part of the state, the local prosecutor's office said, adding that the bodies were apparently dumped from a pick-up truck.
In Chihuahua capital, another four bodies were dumped by gunmen from a car near a gasoline station, the office added.
Late Saturday, three people were murdered in Chihuahua city, one in Cuauhtemoc and another in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city considered ground zero for drug-related violence across the border from El Paso, Texas.
In Camargo, a waitress was shot to death by gunmen who strafed a local bar with automatic weapons, the prosecutor's office said.
Bordering the United States, Chihuahua is the prime battleground of the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels' war for control of the lucrative drug smuggling routes into the US.
Last year, Chihuahua state accounted for some 2,400 murders out of 5,300 nationwide attributed to drug violence, despite the presence of some 8,500 troops in the state sent by President Ernesto Calderon to stem the bloodshed.