Horror as nine bodies found hanged from bridge and 14 heads decapitated and dumped along U.S. border in Mexico
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The bodies of 23 people have been found hanging from a bridge or decapitated and dumped along the border city of Nuevo Laredo, where drug cartels are fighting a bloody and escalating turf war.
Authorities found nine of the victims, including four women, hanging from an overpass leading to a main highway, said a Tamaulipas state official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide information on the case.
Hours later, police found 14 human heads inside coolers outside city hall along with a threatening note. The 14 bodies were found in black plastic bags inside a car abandoned near an international bridge, the official said.
Gruesome: Nine bodies have been found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, which borders Texas. The four women and five men are suspected members of Los Zetas drugs cartel
The official didn't release the contents of the note, or give a motive for the killings.
But the city across the border from Laredo, Texas has recently been torn by a renewed turf war between the Zetas cartel, a gang of former Mexican special-forces soldiers, and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which has joined forces with the Gulf cartel, former allies of the Zetas.
Local media published photos of the nine bloodied bodies, some with duct tape wrapped around their faces, hanging from the overpass along with a message threatening the Gulf cartel.
Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire met with Tamaulipas Gov. Egidio Torre Cantu on Friday and agreed to send more federal forces to the state, according to a statement from Poire's office.
Horrifying: The bodies showed signs of beating and torture. Authorities also found 14 decapitated heads nearby
Nuevo Laredo was the site of a 2003 dispute between the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels that set off a wave of violence that has left thousands dead and spread brutal violence across Mexico.
That year, then-Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas was arrested and accused drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, sensing weakness , tried to move in on Nuevo Laredo, unleashing a bloody battle.
The city of tree-covered plazas and hacienda-style restaurants was transformed as the Zetas, then working as enforcers for the Gulf cartel, and Sinaloa cartel fighters waged battles with guns and grenades in broad daylight.
Killings and police corruption became so brazen that then President Vicente Fox was forced to send in hundreds of troops and federal agents, and the only man brave enough to take the job of police chief was gunned down hours after he was sworn in.
The Zetas won that fight and have since ruled the city with fear, threatening police, reporters and city officials and extorting money from businesses.
They broke off their alliance with the Gulf cartel in 2010, worsening the violence across northeast Mexico.
But last month, 14 mutilated bodies were found in a vehicle left in the city center.
Some media outlets reported that the Sinaloa cartel took responsibility for those bodies and in a message allegedly signed by its leader, Guzman, said the group was now back in Nuevo Laredo 'to clean' the city.
More than 50,000 people have been killed since the Mexican government began a crackdown on narco-trafficking in 2006.
and.....
23 Dead in Day of Horror for Mexico Border City
AFP
May 4, 2012
May 4, 2012
The northeast Mexico border city of Nuevo Laredo saw a brutal day of gang violence Friday, with 14 headless bodies found stuffed in a vehicle and nine others hanging from a bridge.
Fourteen heads corresponding to the decapitated bodies were meanwhile found in ice boxes outside the city hall, according to local security forces in the city of almost 400,000 inhabitants across the border from Laredo, Texas.
Horrified motorists earlier encountered the blood-stained bodies of four women and five men hanging off a bridge, alongside an apparent message from a drug gang.
The grim spectacles were extreme even for Nuevo Laredo and the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, which have seen some of the most gruesome episodes in Mexico’s brutal five-and-a-half year drug war so far.
State security forces and soldiers cordoned off the areas where the bodies were found and gave no immediate comment.
Nuevo Laredo, the main road trade crossing from Mexico into the United States, is regularly the scene of vicious disputes between the Zetas drug gang — set up by ex-elite soldiers-turned-hitmen in the 1990s — and their former employers the Gulf cartel, now believed to be allied to the Sinaloa cartel of billionaire fugitive Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Last month the dismembered remains of 14 men were found inside a van left near Nuevo Laredo city hall. Days afterwards a car exploded outside police headquarters.Mexico has seen a rise in gangland-style violence blamed for more than 50,000 deaths since the start of a nationwide military crackdown on organized crime in December 2006.
In neighboring Veracruz state, further south on the Gulf of Mexico, security forces Thursday found the dismembered bodies of two missing news photographers and two others, just days after a magazine reporter was killed in the same state.
All caused by our Politicians War on Drugs!
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