By Stephen Gibbs
BBC News, Mexico City
**There has been a surge of violence in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, with 43 people murdered in and around it in the last three days.**About 1,300 people have been murdered in the border city since the start of the year. Most of the killings are believed to be drug related.
Earlier this year the government sent thousands of troops to the city in an effort to contain the violence.
The move had appeared to be working; it is not clear what prompted this rise.
Bar attack
A family of three were the latest victims of the rash of killings that is currently taking place in Ciudad Juarez.
A man was driving his wife and their four-year-old son along a highway near the city when their car was sprayed with automatic gunfire. The father and child were killed instantly, the mother is in hospital.
The previous day a popular bar in the centre of town was attacked.
The owner and his wife were shot at close range by gunmen who then opened fire on customers, killing six of them.
A few hours earlier a group of heavily-armed masked men attacked a house outside the city, close to the border with Texas. A further six people were killed.
Mexican prosecutors are offering no explanation for the surge in violence.
Thousands of troops are attempting to keep the peace in the city, which is the setting for a vicious turf war between rival drug cartels, battling for control of highly lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.
In a sign of the strange public relations campaign which runs alongside the gun battles, on Tuesday one cartel put up banners in the city, declaring that it was not responsible for what it described as “civilian deaths”.