MEXICO CITY - Drug-related violence over the weekend claimed 51 lives across Mexico, including a record-setting 15 decapitations in the beach resort of Acapulco, authorities reported Sunday.
The beheadings, mutilations, drive-by shootings and summary executions were carried out in southeastern Guerrero and northern Chihuahua states, as well as in the Mexican capital, despite the government's five-year, 50,000-troop crackdown on organized crime.
The body of a man that was hanging from a pedestrian bridge prior to the rope slipping loose is guarded by Mexican soldiers in Acapulco, Mexico, Sunday Jan. 9, 2011. Four men were found at the site, two of them decapitated and dismembered. Several separate violent incidents over the weekend in this Pacific resort city have dozens dead. Street sign on bridge reads, "Acapulco Clean City." (AP-Yonhap News)
By far the grisliest scene unfolded Saturday at an Acapulco shopping center where the decapitated bodies of 15 men were found on the sidewalk, with their severed heads bunched nearby. Two of the victims were 17 years old, a Guerrero official said.
It was the worst mass decapitation since August 2008, when 12 headless bodies were found in eastern Yucatan state capital Merida, in a crime attributed to the notorious Los Zetas drug cartel.
Another six murder victims were found Saturday in Acapulco stuffed inside a taxi near a supermarket, and four other men were murdered in two separate incidents in the city, Guerrero state police said.
On Sunday, Acapulco officials said police found three more bodies, including one that was decapitated and mutilated, on the side of a road near the city. Media reports said the victims were among 10 people kidnapped late Saturday from a local discotheque.
In Mexico's most violent state of Chihuahua that borders the United States, authorities reported 17 people murdered over the weekend, 14 of them in Ciudad Juarez -- across from El Paso, Texas -- which has the highest murder rate in the country.
In Mexico City, four young men were killed in a drive by shooting late Saturday outside a grocery store, city officials said.
The latest killings bore the hallmarks of the vicious gangland slayings that have terrorized large areas of Mexico as drug cartels battle it out among themselves and with security forces.
More than 30,000 people have been killed since 2006 when the government of President Felipe Calderon launched a major military crackdown against the drug gangs. Last year alone, a record 12,000 murders were blamed on the drug violence.
(AFP)
<한글기사>
멕' 아카풀코서 목잘린 시신 15구 발견
멕시코의 해변 휴양지 아카풀코의 쇼핑센터 부근에서 목이 잘린 남자 시신 15구가 8일 발견됐다.
이날 자정 직후 화재 신고를 받고 경찰이 현장에 도착하니 불이 난 흔적은 없고 대신 5대의 버려진 차량과 목이 달아난 시신들이 발견됐다.
시신들은 25세부터 30세 사이의 청년들로 추정된다고 경찰 보고서는 밝혔다.
이 같은 참혹한 살인 사건은 라이벌 갱단들간의 전쟁의 와중에서 빚어진 것으로 보인다.
멕시코 정부가 군대를 동원, 마약 조직의 소탕작전에 들어간 2006년 이후 갱단 들간의 상호 전쟁으로 지금까지 3만여명이 살해됐다. (연합뉴스)
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