SEVEN dismembered bodies found in Mexico: Discovered with message accusing authorities of working with country's most dangerous drugs lord

Mexican drugs war: Authorities found the dismembered bodies of seven men in the western city of Culiacan in the early hours of Tuesday

Mexican police have found seven dismembered bodies in a Pacific coast state where the country's most-wanted man is battling its most aggressive drug cartel.

The Attorney General's Office says the bodies were found early Tuesday in Sinaloa along with a message accusing authorities of cooperating with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Guzman is head of the Sinaloa cartel, and the letter's wording suggests it may have been written by the Zetas cartel.

The bodies were discovered stuffed into 13 black garbage bags and dumped on a footpath in a residential area, authorities said.

The Zetas have launched tit-for-tat attacks on Sinaloa strongholds since Sinaloa cartel gunmen and their allies moved in on Zetas turf in the Gulf coast states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.

Last week, suspected Zetas took the unusual step of using an airplane to drop thousands of leaflets accusing Sinaloa's governor of taking orders from Guzman.

Guzman, who has long been recognized as Mexico's most powerful drug capo, was included this year on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.

He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry truck and has a $7 million bounty on his head.

Authorities say his Sinaloa cartel has recently been expanding his drug business abroad, building international operations in Central and South America and the Pacific.

The Zetas were founded by former soldiers who defected from the Mexican military in 1998 to work as hired killers for drug traffickers.

They have since carved out their own smuggling empire, expanded massively across Mexico and diversified into kidnapping, extortion and theft of crude oil.

Last month, violence between the Zetas and their rivals intensified in several parts of Mexico.

Among the worst incidents saw 18 people were decapitated near the city of Guadalajara and nine victims hanged from a bridge in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas.

In total, around 55,000 people have died in drug related violence and more than 5,000 have disappeared in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.


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26 bodies found in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city

Dead bodies in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — The bound and gagged bodies of 26 men were found early Thursday in abandoned vehicles in Guadalajara, a grim sign of escalating mafia violence among gangsters vying for control of Mexico’s second-largest city.

Investigators from the state of Jalisco said that the corpses were stuffed in three vehicles left near the Millennium Arches, a major landmark, and that each of the dead had been shot in the head.

The discovery came less than 24 hours after a similarly grisly scene in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, where the charred remains of 16, some of them handcuffed and wearing bulletproof vests, were left in two pickups. Investigators are looking into a possible connection to Thursday’s crime scene.

“These barbaric acts show that the war between the criminals is getting even more brutal,” said Jorge Aristoteles Sandoval, Guadalajara’s mayor.

Guadalajara has not been among the places considered major Mexican drug-war battlegrounds, such as Ciudad Juarez or Monterrey. But analysts say Thursday’s discovery could signal a new push by the Zetas cartel into territory that has long been the domain of the Sinaloa Federation, the reigning criminal power along Mexico’s western coast.

Luis Carlos Najera, Jalisco state police chief, told reporters that a message was left in one of the vehicles, a white van with license plates from the state of Mexico. But he did not disclose the contents of the message.

Drug-war experts say the Zetas may be muscling into Guadalajara to fight for a bigger piece of Mexico’s billion-dollar methamphetamine trade. Local Sinaloa boss Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel was killed by Mexican soldiers in the city in July 2010. Since then, factional fighting has broken out among groups of gangsters with shifting loyalties and names, such as the Resistance, the New Jalisco Cartel and the Milenio Cartel.

The gruesome spectacle Thursday comes at an inopportune time for Guadalajara, which is two days away from hosting an expected 600,000 visitors for the annual Guadalajara International Book Fair, billed as the largest in the Spanish-speaking world.

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