It appears that seventeen Mexican drug gang members were killed next to the U.S. border on Saturday after one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico’s three-year narco-war, Reuters reports.

According to the police officials, rival groups of the Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought with each other with machine guns and rifles in the early hours of the morning. Fourteen bodies were found on a road, surrounded by hundreds of bullets and many of their faces were destroyed, police said. The 15th corpse was found nearby. Two other men died in hospital on Saturday evening.

Six men were injured and other six are currently under arrest. However, several gang members are believed to have escaped. Two of the dead were thought to be senior hitmen for the Arellano Felix cartel and were identified by large gold rings on their fingers. Policemen explained that the rings had the icon of Saint Death, a ghoulish figure that gangsters believe defends them.

"Today shows we are facing a terrible war never seen before on the (U.S.-Mexico) border,” Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno declared at a news conference.

“The risk of attacks against our agents after an event like this is extremely high,” Lt. Col Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's police chief, said.

Nearly 190 people were killed in Tijuana so far this year. In 2007, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and there have been more than 900 this year.