Fifteen people beheaded in Mexico, drug gang suspected

Forensic technicians handle bags containing the remains of people at the morgue after they had been found in two abandoned cars in Guadalajara May 9, 2012. Police found the decapitated and dismembered bodies of 15 people near Mexico's second city Guadalajara on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the latest atrocity by the Zetas gang. The bodies and heads were stuffed into two vehicles abandoned on the side of a highway in the small town of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, said Tomas Coronado, chief prosecutor for the state of Jalisco. (Reuters Pictures)

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Police found the decapitated and dismembered bodies of 15 people near Mexico's second city Guadalajara on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the latest atrocity by the country's most brutal drug cartel.

Believed to have been carried out by the Zetas gang, it was one of the biggest mass beheadings in the recent history of Mexico, where decapitations have become alarmingly common.

The bodies and heads were stuffed into two vehicles abandoned on the side of a highway in the small town of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, said Tomas Coronado, chief prosecutor for the state of Jalisco.

Some of the bodies had been refrigerated before they were dumped, Coronado said.

A policeman at the scene in Ixtlahuacan said some victims had been so badly mutilated officers could not tell if they were male or female.

The officer said a note by the bodies was signed by the Zetas cartel, a criminal militia led by former Mexican soldiers blamed for some of the worst atrocities in Mexico's drug war.

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