CIUDAD JUAREZ (Mexico) - HITMEN stormed an operating theatre in a clinic in the north Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez to finish off a youth who had earlier been shot in the street, local police said on Monday.

The 25-year-old patient had been shot overnight on Sunday near the Red Cross clinic, a police official told AFP, declining to be named.

'When the doctor and nurses were treating him in one of the operating theaters, two masked men carrying heavy weapons arrived and ordered the staff to immediately leave before shooting him three times,' the official said.

The Red Cross in violent Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, suspended its activities for one day two months ago due to threats from assassins against patients.

Three men, including a local police chief, died in separate attacks in other towns in the same northern Chihuahua state in the past 24 hours, police said.

Almost 4,000 people have died this year in gangland-style killings across Mexico, particularly in areas where drug traffickers are fighting for control of key routes into the United States.

A government crackdown launched nearly two years ago, including the deployment of some 36,000 soldiers, has so far failed to stop the bloodshed. -- AFP