CIUDAD JUAREZ - Thirteen people, including a police officer, were killed in Mexico's northern Chihuahua state Friday, officials said, as regional prosecutors held a security crisis meeting in the state capital.

The deaths followed the signing, by politicians and prosecutors, of a nationwide security pact in Mexico City Thursday in a bid to tackle a spike in drug-related murders and kidnappings in recent months.

Violence has escalated throughout Mexico since President Felipe Calderon, who took office at the end of 2006, launched a military crackdown on drug trafficking.

A group of masked men armed with AK-47s killed a local police commander outside Ciudad Juarez, a town hall official told AFP. Later, a group armed with assault rifles killed four men travelling in a vehicle in the town center, local police said.

Other deaths included three businessmen killed in firearm attacks, and a man shot more than 100 times with AK-47s, officials said.

Prosecutors from across the country met in Chihuahua, the state capital, in the first steps of the new security pact.

The 74-point accord includes a police purge, strategies against money-laundering and drug-trafficking, and the creation of two federal prisons for kidnappers.

Drug-related violence throughout Mexico has killed some 2,700 people since the start of the year -- more than in all of 2007.

Federal authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country since early 2007, including 2,500 in Ciudad Juarez, in a bid to tackle drug-related attacks.

In the worst violence, the Juarez drug cartel is fighting a turf war for control of Chihuahua state and its key drug routes to the United States with the Sinaloa cartel, from the neighboring state further south.