Mexico band Kombo Kolombia reported missing after gig Published duration 26 January 2013

Police in northern Mexico are searching for 20 members of a band who went missing after playing a gig in the city of Hidalgo on Thursday night.

Twelve musicians and eight crew members from the band Kombo Kolombia have not been heard from since.

Relatives said they got worried when the musicians, who play Colombian vallenato music, stopped answering their mobile phones.

Drugs gangs have killed a number of Mexican musicians in recent years.

When relatives travelled to the concert venue, they found the place abandoned and the band's cars empty.

Risky business

In 2007, Sergio Gomez, the singer of band K-Paz de la Sierra was kidnapped after a concert in the western state of Michoacan.

He was found strangled days later.

Sergio Vega, known as El Shaka, was shot dead in 2010 in Sinaloa state, in western Mexico, just hours after he had denied reports of his own murder.

However, most of those killed played narcocorridos, songs celebrating the lives of drug barons.

Kombo Kolombia specialise in Colombian popular music, not normally linked to Mexican drug gangs.

However, local media reported that the band had played in bars which have in the past been targeted by drug cartels.

More than 70,000 people are estimated to have died in drug-related violence in Mexico over the past six years.