23 bodies dumped in drugs turf war

THE bodies of 23 people have been found hanged from a bridge or decapitated in the Mexican 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, hanged from an overpass leading to a main highway. Hours later, police found 14 human heads inside coolers outside city hall along with a threatening note.

The 14 decapitated bodies were found in black plastic bags inside a minivan abandoned near a bridge.

The official provided no motive for the killings, but Nuevo Laredo has recently been torn apart 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, hanged from the overpass along with a message threatening the Gulf cartel.

“This is how I will finish all the fools you send,” the banner read.

It also accused its rivals of setting off a car bomb that exploded outside Nuevo Laredo police headquarters last week and it made fun of a Sinaloa cartel enforcer killed in a Nuevo Laredo prison two years ago. “He cried like a woman giving birth,” it said.

Interior secretary Alejandro Poire met with Tamaulipas governor Egidio Torre Cantu on Friday and agreed to send more federal forces to the state.

Last month, 14 mutilated bodies were found in a vehicle left in Nuevo Laredo’s city centre, behind city hall. Some media outlets reported that the Sinaloa cartel took responsibility for those bodies and in a message allegedly signed by its leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, said the group was now back in Nuevo Laredo “to clean” the city.