Walls and Floors Covered in Blood

Walls stained with blood: Inside the Mexican house where druglords killed 16 teens at a high school birthday party.

Soldiers stand inside a blood-stained room in Ciudad Juarez after a group of suspected drug hitmen burst into a birthday party, killing 16 teenagers.

A gang of suspected drug hitmen burst into a high school birthday party, opening fire and killing 16 teenagers in Ciudad Juarez in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Gunmen jumped out of several 4x4s and stormed the house where students were celebrating the birthday of a classmate.

They opened fire on the party in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, in what is believed to be a mistaken drugs hit.

Crime scene: Bodies lay on the street outside and pools of blood collected by nearby parked cars. 

Bodies lay on the street outside and pools of blood collected by nearby parked cars.

Inside the house, the walls were stained with blood and marked with bullet holes.

'The men drove up in SUVs, they were well-armed. They went into the house and shot at everyone, you could hear the gunfire all around,' a neighbour at the scene said.

Patricia Gonzalez, attorney general for Chihuahua state that includes Ciudad Juarez, said the shooting was possibly linked to drug cartels.

'We have two lines of investigation and one of them is linked to drug trafficking,' she told a news conference.

'We know from witnesses that the men arrived looking for someone.' She declined to give more details.

Patricia Gonzalez, attorney general for Chihuahua state that includes Ciudad Juarez, said the shooting was possibly linked to drug cartels.

Over the past two years, hitmen have attacked parties in Chihuahua state, searching for rivals, and police have reported that some teenagers in Ciudad Juarez have been involved in kidnapping others.

Ms Gonzalez said the dead included three adults and 11 minors. Fourteen others were wounded, two critically.

All the victims were between 15 and 20 years old, the army said.

She denied earlier reports that the teenagers were celebrating a local sports championship victory.

'They were about 15 men, they closed off the surrounding streets and began shooting at the house as they moved inside,' said army spokesman Enrique Torres.

The bloody imprint of a foot is seen on the blood-stained floor of a house in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas

Ciudad Juarez is the bloodiest front in Mexico's three-year drug war as rival cartels fight over markets and control of smuggling routes into the U.S.

Violence is escalating even as federal police and soldiers patrol the streets. Some 2,650 people were killed in drug violence in Ciudad Juarez last year and cartel murders have jumped since the start of 2010.

In some of the worst attacks, gunmen have stormed at least seven drug rehabilitation clinics in the manufacturing city over the past two years, targeting rival dealers.

Two strikes in September killed 28 people.

Mexico is the key transit route for U.S.-bound cocaine from South America and a top producer of marijuana and heroin.

A military crackdown on rival cartels in Mexico has fueled a surge in drug violence

A surgical glove lies on a puddle of bloodied water outside a home where unknown gunmen stormed a gathering of students.