ARMED men shot dead an English-language student during a night class in Mexico's most deadly city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities said yesterday.

Five other violent deaths, including a beheading, were reported overnight in the northern Chihuahua state, bordering the US, which is at the epicentre of Mexico's drug violence.

"Gunmen entered an English night school last night (Tuesday) to kill one student, without hurting any others," said an officer from the city's police, declining to be named. The men shot at the school as they left, he added.

The border city of 1.2 million saw more than 3,100 violent deaths last year alone in violence blamed on drug gangs fighting for control of lucrative trafficking routes to the US.

Police meanwhile found the beheaded corpse of a man near a private university in the state capital Chihuahua, where an armed gang also shot dead four youths driving in two cars, authorities said yesterday.

The federal government last week said murders in Ciudad Juarez had fallen around 60 per cent, from a daily average of 11 in October to four in April, 2011.

Violence has increased in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of troops to take on criminal gangs in December 2006.

Originally published as Student shot dead in classroom