Six US citizens were killed in less than a week in the volatile Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, including two students in the latest attack, US officials confirmed Thursday.
Two US students from the University of Texas at El Paso, across the border, were killed in a shooting attack on their car in Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday, bringing the "total of six over the past week who have been fatally shot," said US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.
US officials had earlier said that one of the dead students was an American, Eder Diaz, 23. The US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez said Thursday that the other student, Manuel Acosta, 25, also was a US citizen.
Four Americans were also killed in the city over the past weekend, including a minor, Mexican officials said.
A total of 84 Americans have been killed this year in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located, Crowley said Thursday.
The border city has one of the world's highest murder rates, with more than 2,000 people killed this year, amid a turf war between rival drug gangs over lucrative trafficking routes into the United States.
Armed men shot dead a Mexican student from the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez and another youth inside a house on Wednesday night, officials said Thursday.
Last week another student from the same university was seriously wounded by shots fired by federal police during a demonstration against the spiralling violence.
An eruption of suspected drug violence has left over 28,000 people dead nationwide since the launch of a military clampdown on organized crime in 2006, according to official figures.
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