Bullet holes are seen on windows at the place where rival drug trafficking gangs clashed in the community of Las Varas, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on July 6, 2017. (Xinhua/David Peinado)

A massacre in a bar left 11 people dead on Sunday, Mexican authorities said, as the country grapples with a record homicide rate despite the government's pledge to stop gang violence, Reuters reported on Monday. 

The attorney general's office of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato said the bodies of seven men and four women were found in the bar in the early hours of Sunday morning in the city of Jaral del Progreso. Another woman was found with gunshot injuries, authorities said in a news release.

Local media reported the four dead women may have been employed as dancers at the bar, located on the side of a highway. There was no immediate information on a possible motive in the attack, but it bore the signs of a drug gang killing, according to a report by The Washington Post on Sunday.

Guanajuato, a major carmaking hub, has become a recurring scene of criminal violence in Mexico, ravaged by a turf war between the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

The detained leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima gang, José Antonio Yépez Ortíz, was better known by his nickname "El Marro," which means "The Sledgehammer." He had long fought a bloody turf battle with the Jalisco cartel, and authorities blamed him for much of the violence in the industrial and farming state.

Agencies