Mexico City, Feb 17 (Inditop.com/EFE) Five men were found decapitated next to a primary school in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, authorities said.
The victims, whose severed heads were left nearby, bore signs of torture, the state Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday, adding that the remains were discovered shortly after dawn in the town of Palmilla, which lies on Sinaloa’s boundary with Nayarit.
Three severed heads turned up in the same community last week.
Two of the men found Tuesday had Z-shaped marks on their backs, possibly referring to “Los Zetas”, a band of deserters from the Mexican special forces who now constitute the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel.
Authorities suggested the presence of the “Z” could indicate the victims were affiliated with the group or that the killings were the work of Los Zetas.
Sinaloa, birthplace of Mexico’s leading kingpins, is among the states hardest hit by the drug-related violence that has claimed 17,000 lives nationwide since December 2006, when newly inaugurated President Felipe Calderon militarised the struggle against organised crime.
Nearly 1,200 people have died in gangland violence so far this year, according to a tally kept by Mexico City daily El Universal.
