CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A violent and ongoing battle between two powerful drug cartels has pushed this northern border city's murder rate -- already one of the highest in the world -- to new records in 2009, according to a government report issued Wednesday.

Ciudad Juarez has had 1,986 homicides -- almost all drug-related -- through mid-October this year, up from 1,171 for the same period in 2008, said the report from the Chihuahua state attorney general's office. There have been 195 murders this month alone, officials said.

The killings, averaging seven a day in the city of 1.5 million, can be blamed on an escalating drug war between the Sinaloa cartel run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the most-wanted man in Mexico, and the Juarez Cartel, said Chihuahua state Public Safety Secretary Victor Valencia. The cartels are fighting to control the lucrative smuggling route between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, just across the border in Texas.

To put Ciudad Juarez's homicide rate in context, police in New York City -- with more than five times the population -- project about 457 murders in all of 2009.

The U.S. is gravely concerned about the ongoing violence in Mexico, said newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual.

"Drug trafficking is a threat to the entire hemisphere. It is a threat that has points of supply and demand and traffic ... and we have to analyze the problem as well, engage, invest in resources and capabilities to address all those issues," Pascual said Wednesday at a news conference after a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon to present his diplomatic credentials.

While Ciudad Juarez is clearly the most violent city in Mexico, cartel battles continue to take lives throughout the country.

In the central town of Hidalgo on Wednesday, police were trying to identify the body of a young man, about 16 years old, who was found dead with two bullets in his head, his genitals cut off and a warning note stabbed into his chest.

The body, dressed in a navy-blue school uniform, was found Tuesday evening by local residents.

Also Wednesday, police said soldiers were involved in a shootout with armed men at a restaurant in Nuevo Laredo, a city across the border from Texas.

Nuevo Laredo police said in a statement that the shootout lasted about 20 minutes and there were no reports of people killed or wounded. The army wouldn't comment on the shootout.

And in the border city of Reynosa, about 140 miles (228 kilometres) southeast of Nuevo Laredo, a soldier was shot on the leg when about 60 gunmen travelling in 20 cars opened fired with automatic rifles and threw grenades at troops patrolling the area, the Defence Department said in a statement Wednesday.

No arrests were made following Tuesday's attack, the department said.

President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against drug traffickers shortly after taking office in December 2006. Since then, the government has deployed more than 45,000 soldiers and federal police to drug hotspots.

Drug traffickers have responded fiercely, unleashing unprecedented violence with shootouts and gruesome decapitations. More than 13,500 people have been killed by drug violence since then. The government says most of the dead were involved in drug trafficking.