“A noon shootout left six police officers and a civilian dead on the streets of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Friday, city officials said.

Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said five of the dead were federal police officers and one was a female city officer, all part of the joint police task force formed to combat drug violence in the border town.

“Armed men have stormed two hotels in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, abducting four guests and as many as three hotel employees, officials say.

Nuevo Leon’s state attorney general said up to 30 gunmen had raided the Holiday Inn and Hotel Mision.

The gunmen abducted three businessmen, a female guest and two receptionists. A hotel security guard is also missing.

The raid follows a surge of violence that has plagued Monterrey, Mexico’s industrial capital, in recent weeks.

“Dozens of gunmen mounted rare and apparently coordinated attacks targeting two army garrisons in northern Mexico, touching off firefights that killed 18 attackers.

The attempts to blockade soldiers inside their bases — part of seven near-simultaneous attacks across two northern states — appeared to mark a serious escalation in Mexico’s drug war, in which cartel gunmen attacked in unit-size forces armed with bulletproof vehicles, dozens of hand grenades and assault rifles.

“The U.S. consortium that focuses on crimes along the border warns that a violent Mexican prison gang may try to retaliate against U.S. officers, officials say.

The El Paso Intelligence Center issued a bulletin urging all U.S. law enforcement officers to wear their protective vests and alert family members about the possible threat, USA Today reported Thursday.

“Gunmen in the drug war-plagued Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez killed two Americans and a Mexican linked to the local U.S. consulate, an attack U.S. President Barack Obama said ‘outraged’ him.

An American woman working at the consulate in Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, and her U.S. husband were fatally shot by suspected drug gang hitmen in broad daylight on Saturday as they left a consulate social event, U.S. and Mexican officials told Reuters.

A Mexican man married to another consulate employee was killed around the same time in another part of the city after he and his wife left the same event, a U.S. official said.