MONTERREY, Mexico, June 12 (Reuters) - A Mexican state lawmaker was shot and killed in the busy center of the violent business city of Monterrey on Tuesday, police said, the latest attack in a surge of killings by feuding drug gangs.

Unknown gunmen sprayed politician Mario Cesar Rios' car with bullets as he drove down a main city avenue, a police spokesman said.

Rios, 44, was a legislator for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the Congress of Nuevo Leon state, where the party holds power.

Some witnesses said Rios survived the attack and drove himself to the hospital but died upon arrival, local media reported.

Monterrey, 150 miles (230 km) from the U.S. border, is Mexico's main business city and was until recently spared the violence that is sweeping Mexico.

But in the last two years gunmen from rival drug gangs fighting to control trafficking routes have moved into the city and carried out a wave of gangland-style murders, including dozens of policemen.

Victims of drug gang killings in the city number some 80 people so far this year, up from 55 in the whole of 2006.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of troops across Mexico in an attempt to rein in the growing power of the cartels, but the violence has not abated.

More than 1,000 killings have been blamed on the drug war so far this year, on a par with some 2,000 in 2006.

AlertNet news is provided by