Mexico's northern border city of Ciudad Juarez has set a new record of 1,801 murders in the first nine months of 2009, according to an AFP tally.

September was also the most violent month yet with 311 killings, the tally of daily police reports showed on Thursday.

Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent cities in the world, is the epicenter of a fatal drug war between rival drug cartels for control of lucrative drug routes into the United States.

Last year, 1,653 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million population.

In one incident in a wealthy neighborhood on Thursday, men with assault rifles killed 13 people, the attorney general's office said.

Mexico has dispatched some 50,000 soldiers in a nationwide clampdown to assist local police forces since Mexico's President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

However, the drug-related violence has left over 14,000 people dead during the same period.

AGB/DT