CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO - Gunmen burst into a private party in Mexico's notorious border city of Ciudad Juarez and shot dead nine people, including six members of one family, security officials said Monday.

Four people died on the spot, two others died in hospital, and the remaining two were hunted down by the gunmen and shot dead near the airport, police said of the late Sunday slaughter.

Nine others were killed in separate attacks in the past 24 hours in Mexico's most violent city, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, police said.

Some 6,500 people have died in Ciudad Juarez in the past three years in killings blamed on turf wars between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug gangs and their hitmen over lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.

More than 28,000 people have died nationwide in suspected drug violence since December 2006, when the government launched an offensive against the gangs with the deployment of some 50,000 troops.