MEXICO CITY, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's homicide rate is on the rise, with 20 murders per 100,000 inhabitants registered in 2016, the national statistics institute INEGI said on Wednesday.
The rate was 17 homicides per 100,000 in 2015.
A total of 23,953 murders took place last year, including 15,064, which is 62.8 percent of the victims, killed by gunfire.
Most of the violent deaths, accounting for 40.4 percent of the total, were concentrated in just five states: the central state of Mexico, the southern state of Guerrero, the northern state of Chihuahua, the west-central state of Michoacan, and the western state of Jalisco.
Most of those states are also home to the country's biggest drug cartels.
Mexico's Interior Ministry said in June that a spike in violent deaths in 2016 and the beginning of this year was due to the struggle for power between criminal rings following the government's strategy of going after cartel leaders.
Critics say the strategy has only served to break up the large cartels into numerous smaller drug trafficking organizations.
