Authorities in northern Mexico still have no leads after searching two days for 20 people with a Colombian-style band who went missing after a private performance at a bar, an official with the Nuevo Leon State Investigation Agency said Sunday. 
 
 The 20 people include 15 members of Kombo Kolombia and the band's crew. 
 
 People living near the bar in Hidalgo municipality north of Monterrey reported hearing gunshots about 4 a.m. Friday, following by the sound of vehicles speeding away, said the source with the state agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by the news media. 
 
 The officials added that gunfire is common in the area, and said investigators found spent bullets nearby. 
 
 Relatives filed an official report about their missing loved ones on Friday, after they lost cellular telephone contact with them following the Thursday night performance. When family members went to the bar to investigate, they found the band members' vehicles still parked outside. 
 
 For three years, Kombo Kolombia has played a Colombian style of music known as vallenato, which is popular in Nuevo Leon state. Most of the group's musicians were from the area, and have held large concerts in addition to bar performances. 
 
 Nuevo Leon state officials said one of those missing is a Colombian citizen with Mexican residency. 
 
 Members of other musical bands, usually groups that performed "narcocorridos" celebrating the exploits of drug traffickers, have been killed in Mexico in recent years. But Kombo Kolombia did not play that type of music and its lyrics did not deal with violence or drug trafficking. ||||| The Colombian-style music group was playing at a ranch in northern Mexico when at least 10 gunmen entered the warehouse where the private party was being held and forced them and several crew members into waiting vehicles, a survivor of the attack told authorities. 
 
 A Nuevo Leon state police officer stands guard on a dirt road leading to a ranch as a forensic a vehicle leaves near the town of Mina, in northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. At least eight bodies... (Associated Press) 
 
 CORRECTS BYLINE TYPO TO VAZQUEZ.- Nuevo Leon state police stand guard on a dirt road leading to a ranch near the town of Mina, northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. At least eight bodies were found... (Associated Press) 
 
 CORRECTS BYLINE TYPO TO VAZQUEZ.- State and federal police drive along a dirt road leading to a ranch near the town of Mina, in northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. At least eight bodies were found... (Associated Press) 
 
 Nuevo Leon state police stand guard on a dirt road leading to a ranch near the town of Mina, in northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. At least eight bodies were found in a well near this ranch on Sunday... (Associated Press) 
 
 CORRECTS BYLINE TYPO TO VAZQUEZ.- An army soldier stands guard on a dirt road leading to a ranch near the town of Mina, in northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. At least eight bodies were found in a... (Associated Press) 
 
 Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said the survivor, a member of the Kombo Kolombia band, told police the 18 were blindfolded and driven on dirt roads until they stopped. He then heard the assailants ask fellow band members if they belonged to a drug cartel, shots were fired and the bodies were dumped into a well. 
 
 Domene said the survivor, who is being protected by soldiers, was able to reach a nearby ranch and get help. He wouldn't give details on how the man was able to escape. 
 
 The man later led authorities to the well where searchers found several bodies, Domene said. 
 
 Domene said four bodies first pulled from the well on Sunday have been identified by their relatives, including a Colombian citizen who played the keyboard. Three of them were wearing matching T-shirt with the name of the band. 
 
 "The search will continue ... to see how many more bodies may be hidden there," he said. 
 
 By Monday afternoon, searchers had pulled 12 bodies from the well along a dirt road in the town of Mina, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) from Laredo, Texas, Domene said. 
 
 The bodies recovered showed signs of torture, said a forensic official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the case. 
 
 It was hard to determine how many more bodies were submersed in the water, he said. 
 
 Authorities initially said 16 members of the band Kombo Kolombia and four crew members were reported missing early Friday after playing at a private party attended by about 50 people and held at a ranch called La Carreta, or The Wagon, in the town of Hidalgo north of Monterrey. 
 
 But Domene said Monday 18 band members had gone missing. He didn't say how many were crew members and how many were musicians. 
 
 The party guests are being questioned and police have yet to determine a motive in the killings, Domene said. 
 
 Nuevo Leon state, on the border with Texas, has been the scene of a turf battle between members of the Gulf drug cartel and the Zetas drug gang. The Zetas were hit men for the Gulf cartel until they split in 2010, unleashing their bloody war. 
 
 People living near the ranch in Hidalgo reported hearing gunshots at about 4 a.m. Friday, followed by the sound of vehicles speeding away, said a separate source with the Nuevo Leon State Investigative Agency. He also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by the news media. 
 
 The officials added that gunfire is common in the area and said investigators found spent bullets nearby. 
 
 Relatives filed a missing persons report on Friday after losing cellular phone contact with the musicians. When they went to the ranch to investigate, they found the band members' vehicles still parked outside. 
 
 Kombo Kolombia has played a Colombian style of music known as vallenato, which is popular in working class neighborhood in the city of Monterrey and other parts of Nuevo Leon state. Most of the group's musicians were from the area, except for the keyboard player who is Colombian and had Mexican residency, Domene said. 
 
 The band regularly played at bars in downtown Monterrey on the weekend. At least two of the bars where they had played had been attacked by gunmen. 
 
 It was Mexico's largest single kidnapping since 20 tourists from the western state of Michoacan were abducted in Acapulco in 2010. Most of their bodies were found a month later in a mass grave. Authorities said the tourists were mistaken for cartel members. 
 
 Members of other musical groups have been murdered in Mexico in recent years, usually groups that perform "narcocorridos" that celebrate the exploits of drug traffickers. But Kombo Kolombia did not play that type of music, and its lyrics were about love and heartbreak and did not deal with violence or drug trafficking. 
 
 But singers of drug exploits are not the only musicians targeted, said Elijah Wald, author of the book, "Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas." 
 
 "There is really not correlation. Drug guys hire people to play for their parties and they hire whatever is happening," he said. "Sergio Gomez, the single-most famous singer killed from K-Paz de la Sierra, his big hit was a version of `Jambalaya.'" 
 
 Gomez was kidnapped and found strangled and tortured in 2007 in the western state of Michoacan, a day after Zayda Pena of the group Zayda and the Guilty Ones was shot in a hospital while recovering from a separate bullet wound in the border town of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. 
 
 Valentin Elizalde, "El Gallo de Oro," was shot to death along with his manager and driver in 2006 following a performance in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. Norteno singer Sergio Vega was shot dead in a northern state of Sinaloa in 2010. 
 
 "A lot of people are being killed because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time and musicians are some of the people on that list," Wald said. ||||| MEXICO CITY -- Bodies found dumped in a well in northeastern Mexico may be those of the 18 musicians and staff of a band that went missing after a Thursday night performance, authorities said. 
 
 
 
 The members of Kombo Kolombia were reported missing Friday by family members who said they lost contact with the group after it performed at a bar along a highway about 30 miles north of Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon state. 
 
 
 
 On Monday, Gov. Rodrigo Medina told reporters that early signs indicated the bodies discovered the day before in the community of Mina are probably the missing members of Kombo Kolombia. Medina said four bodies had so far been positively identified as members of the band but that authorities were holding off on confirming that the entire group was found until each victim was accounted for. 
 
 
 
 Jesus Valencia, a Nuevo Leon state spokesman, told The Times that 18 bodies were found in a well with a water wheel at an abandoned ranch near the group's last known whereabouts, a bar called La Carreta, where the band played Thursday night. 
 
 
 
 After the band's performance, 10 armed men entered the bar and ordered Kombo Kolombia and their staff into waiting vehicles, Valencia said. One of the members managed to escape after the kidnapping and told authorities he watched as band mates were beaten and interrogated. The captors then began executing the musicians, the witness told officials. 
 
 
 
 His identity was not released, but the spokesman said the musician was under state guard and cooperating with the investigation. 
 
 
 
 News reports said eight bodies had been pulled out by noon Monday, some wearing clothing described as similar to the band's costumes, and showing signs of shooting injuries and torture. 
 
 
 
 At least one musician in the group was a Colombian national, authorities said, but no other details were provided. 
 
 
 
 Forensic investigators were on the scene and family members were providing DNA samples to help with identification of the bodies. There were no details on who kidnapped the band or why it might have been targeted. 
 
 
 
 "We assume their killers are related to some kind of criminal group," Valencia said. "They could have played a song someone did not like or said something someone did not like. We don't know." 
 
 
 
 Kombo Kolombia was known to play a style of Colombian music called vallenato, which is related to the imported cumbia genre that is widely popular in Monterrey and now considered a staple of the region's culture. The band was young and did not have a national profile in a country where many large musical groups earn a living playing at festivals, dance halls, and parties in the countryside. 
 
 
 
 According to reports, Kombo Kolombia was a fixture on the nightclub scene in Monterrey, but was not known to play the popular narcocorrido ballads that glorify the exploits of drug lords. Nuevo Leon is one of the most violent states in Mexico, as the Sinaloa and Zetas cartels and their allies fight for dominance of key trafficking routes north to the U.S. border. 
 
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– Members of a Colombian-style band who disappeared after a gig in northern Mexico last week have become the latest musicians to be kidnapped and murdered by drug gangs, authorities fear. The 16-man Kombo Kolombia band and four of its roadies were reported missing early Friday; investigators have now discovered at least eight bodies dumped in a well in the area, the AP reports. The band members were Mexican but played Colombian-style vallenato music, which is not normally associated with drug gangs, the International Business Times reports. After the band played a private show in a bar north of Monterrey last Thursday night, people reported hearing gunshots and vehicles speeding away. The band members' empty vehicles were found outside the bar.