"Organized crime has sparked a serious problem of violence in Veracruz," said the state's governor Miguel Angel Yunes in a statement, calling the latest violence "an act of terrible barbarism."

In the nearby city of Coatzacoalcos, the dead included two adults and four children who died in a hail of bullets as they ate dinner at an outdoor restaurant.

Authorities added that two women were fatally shot in the town of Orizaba, also in Veracruz, one of Mexico's most violent states.

Much of the violence is the result of turf battles between two rival drug trafficking gangs, the Zetas and Jalisco Nueva Generacion.