Colombian-style band Kombo Kolombia missing in northern Mexico

Mexican police are searching for 12 musicians and eight roadies who went missing after a gig on Thursday night.

Kombo Kolombia, who are all Mexican but play Colombian music, played a private show in Hidalgo in the country's north, but haven't been heard from or answered mobile phones since.

When worried relatives went to the concert venue, they found only the band's empty cars.

Drug gangs have killed a number of Mexican musicians in recent years, including Sergio Gomez, singer in K-Pax, who was kidnapped and strangled in 2007.

And Sergio Vega, known as El Shaka, was shot dead in 2010 as he drove in his red Cadillac, hours after denying reports of his own murder.

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

Diego Rivas, whose most famous song was an ode to Joaquin Shorty Guzman, Mexico's most wanted drug lord, was shot dead in 2011. But Kombo Kolombia specialise in Colombian popular music, not normally linked to Mexican drug gangs.

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.