A total of 47,515 people were killed in drug related crimes from December 2006 to September 2011 in Mexico, the Attorney General's Office announced Wednesday.

The office said the death toll in the first nine months of 2011 was 12,903, an increase of 11 percent compared with the same period in 2010, which registered 11,583 deaths in drug violence.

The most violent month in 2011 was April when 1,630 people were killed.

The most violent Mexican city last year was again Ciudad Juarez, which borders the United States. Due to the dispute between the drug cartels of Sinaloa and Juarez, the city witnessed 1,206 killings in the first nine months of last year.

The resort city of Acapulco ranked second with 795 deaths linked to organized drug crimes, which was followed by the northern cities of Torreon (476), Monterrey (399), Durango (390), Culiacan (365) and San Fernando (292).

Some 70 percent of last year's killings occurred in eight of Mexico's 32 states, and most of the homicides were due to rivalry between criminal organizations, said the office.

Drug trafficking is a serious problem in Mexico, and drug cartels often fight with each other due to rivalry, which causes tens of thousands of deaths in drug related crimes every year.

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