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A Molotov cocktail attack at a nightclub in Mexico has claimed the lives of 23 people.

A further 13 were left seriously injured following the fire bombing at the Caballo Blanco bar in Coatzacoalcos.

Eight woman and 15 men were killed in the attack, which saw numerous incendiary missiles thrown, eluniversal.com reported.

A photo of the bar taken after the attack shows widespread fire damage.

The local prosecutor's office requested assistance from the national Offices of the Attorney General of the Republic to investigate the crime.

"The State Attorney General's Office will vent all the necessary investigative acts to establish, in the first place, if the events occurred are the results of a malicious attack, to ensure that the events do not go unpunished, deploying all the human, technical and material resources that are necessary," the prosecutors office's said in a statement.

Have you been affected by Tuesday's attack? Email webnews@trinitymirror.com

(Image: Noticias De Cuautla /Twitter) (Image: Noticias De Cuautla /Twitter)

Witnesses told reporters that an armed group of people began firing on the club before throwing the Molotov cocktails, excelsior reported.

After the 10pm attack relatives and friends of the bar's staff and table dancers arrived at the club, waiting to hear about the fate of their loved ones.

A Molotov cocktail is a generic name for bottle-based incendiary weapons.

Typically petrol will be poured into a glass bottle which is then corked with a piece of flaming rag before the missile is thrown.

Coatzacoalcos is a port city on the Gulf of Mexico coast.

It is home to more than 340,000 people and means, in the Aztec language of Nahuatl, 'the place where the snakes hide'.

Yesterday's tragedy followed an attack on a newspaper in Northern Mexico at the end of July.

A group of people threw Molotov cocktails into the offices of the El Monitor de Parral in the border state of Chihuahua.

The paper announced it would stop publishing crime stories following the attack in a bid to avoid inflaming gang tensions in the notoriously violent state.