VILLAHERMOSA (Mexico) - GUNMEN killed 12 people, including six children, four women and the family of a police officer, in three drive-by shootings in Mexico's south-eastern Tabasco state, local authorities said on Sunday.

The murders 'may be part of a feud between two families, one of them belonging to state police trooper Carlos Reyes Lopez, the chief target of the attack who died in the ambush,' Tabasco Attorney General Rafael Gonzalez said in a statement.

He said the other murder victims included Lopez's mother, wife, two children and his nephews.

Mr Gonzalez said the murders happened on Saturday in Macuspana, a town 35km west of Tabasco, the state's capital.

No arrests have been made in the case, he added.

The 12 people killed included six children aged two to 10, four women aged 17 to 67, and a 20-year-old man a witness said was a fruit vendor who happened to be in the area of the shootings. The witness told a local newspaper that gunmen in three pick-up trucks drove by three homes in Macuspana strafing them with rifle fire.

Mexico is in the grips of an unprecedented wave of mostly drug-related violence despite a massive deployment of government troops. In 2008, more than 5,300 people were murdered throughout Mexico, including 120 police officers, according to a government tally. -- AFP