Despite efforts to uproot international drug cartels in Mexico, 18 people including a policeman have been shot dead in the Latin American state in the past 24 hours.

The police officer was killed at the borderline city of Ciudad Juarez by suspected drug gangs who shot him nine times in a beauty salon where he was accompanying his wife.

Eight people were also found dead in Ciudad Juarez, three of whom with bullet riddled bodies, the state deputy attorney general's office said on Wednesday.

The bodies of another nine people have also been recovered in the Chihuahua state.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the slaughter.

In recent months, Ciudad Juarez, which sits across the border from the US town of El Paso, has turned into the most violent city in Mexico, where a war between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels rages on.

Despite the deployment of 8,500 soldiers into the city's streets in February, over 2,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in 2009 alone.

Drug gangs in Mexico are blamed for more than 14,000 deaths over the last three years.

FF/AKM