49 headless bodies unidentified in Mexico massacre

49 headless bodies unidentified in Mexico massacre

Federal police on a vehicle guard one of the three forensic trucks where several bodies were placed after dozens of bodies, some of them mutilated, were found on a highway connecting the northern Mexican metropolis of Monterrey to the U.S. border found in the Km 47 of the Reynosa-Cadereyta road in the town of San Juan near the city of Monterrey, Mexico, Sunday, May 13, 2012.

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- Authorities struggled Monday to identify the 49 people found mutilated and scattered in a pool of blood in a region near the U.S .border in the presumed fight between Mexico's two dominant drug cartels to outdo each other in bloodshed and expand their territory and smuggling routes.

More than 24 hours after the gruesome discovery, officials had yet to identify any of the corpses, found without heads, hands or feet. So far, no sign of gunshots had been found on any of the bodies, Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene told Milenio television.

There were no reports of mass disappearances in the area and only one couple had visited the morgue in the city of Monterrey where the bodies were taken. None of the six female bodies matched their missing daughter.

The 43 men and six women found Sunday were dumped at the entrance to the town of San Juan in the municipality of Cadereyta on a highway that connects the industrial city of Monterrey with Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas. The area is contested by the Sinaloa Cartel, headed by fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and the Zetas, who authorities said were responsible for Sunday's attack.

Though it's not clear who the victims are, it was the fourth cartel massacre in the last month in an escalating tit-for-tat that seems to involve at least some innocents. The Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel have emerged as the two main forces in Mexican drug-trafficking and other organized crime in the last year, with smaller gangs lining up on either side in a competition that now resembles a full-scale war.

Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire confirmed Monday that there are indications that the recent massacres are the result of a fight between the Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.

Some victims in earlier body dumps have turned out to be bakers, brick layers, students - anyone who can be snatched off the streets in mass killings that one captured gang member said were designed to "cause terror." The body dumps may also be a tactic for drawing law enforcement to disrupt the activities of a cartel's rival in its home or disputed territory, said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official in Mexico's CISEN intelligence agency.

"It puts the authorities in a reactive mode," Hope said.

Authorities said at least a few of the latest victims in Cadereyta had tattoos of the Santa Muerte cult popular among drug traffickers.

There have been 74 killings in the first four months of this year Cadereyta municipality, compared to 27 over the same period in 2011, and 7 in 2010, according to prosecutor's figures in Nuevo Leon state, where the city is located.

"Cadereyta is a place where everyone is fighting it out," Hope said.

The attack follows the discovery of 14 men left in a van in downtown Nuevo Laredo on April 17 and 23 people found hanged or decapitated in the same border city on May 4. The mutilated bodies of 18 dismembered bodied were left near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara, last week. Among the nine who were identified in that attack were bricklayers, waiters and at least one student. None had criminal records.

Nuevo Laredo, like Monterrey, is considered Zeta territory, while Guadalajara has long been controlled by gangs loyal to Sinaloa.

Zeta member Juan Carlos Antonio Mercado was arrested in Guadalajara last week in the kidnapping of 12 people. He told reporters that he and accomplices had been kidnapping people since mid-April at random and held them with the intent of dumping their bodies in the city center on May 10, Mexican Mother's Day, but the police presence kept them from doing so.

Prosecutors in Jalisco said the kidnapping plot fell apart when some victims escaped. It appeared to be linked to the discovery of the 18 dismembered bodies.

In Sunday's dumping, the bodies were found near a white stone arch welcoming visitors to the town of San Juan, which was spray-painted with "100% Zeta."

The fearsome cartel was founded by deserters from the Mexican army's special forces as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, which historically dominated northeastern Mexico and the border along Texas. The groups split in early 2010, causing a bloody battle for territory that the Zetas have been winning. The weakened Gulf Cartel has started to align itself with Sinaloa to battle the Zetas.

The bodies, some of them in plastic garbage bags, were most likely brought to the spot and dropped from the back of a dump truck, said Domene, the Nuevo Leon state security spokesman.

The victims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another location, then transported to San Juan, about 105 miles (175 kilometers) west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, and 75 miles (125 kilometers) southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing, Nuevo Laredo state Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said. San Juan is known as the cradle of baseball in Mexico.

A state police investigator at the morgue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, said some of the bodies were badly decomposed and some had their whole arms or lower legs missing.

De la Garza said he did not rule out the possibility that the victims were U.S.-bound migrants. Authorities said they also may have been brought from other states, because there had been no recent reports of mass disappearances in in Nuevo Leon state.

The two cartels have committed "irrational acts of inhumane and inadmissible violence in their dispute," the federal Attorney General's Office said in statement late Sunday, reiterating its offer of $2 million rewards for information leading to the arrests of Guzman, Ismael Zambada, another Sinaloa cartel leader, and Zeta leaders Heriberto Lazacano Lazcano and Miguel Trevino.

Drug violence has killed more than 47,500 people since President Felipe Calderon launched a stepped-up offensive when he took office in December 2006. The offensive has seen the two cartels emerge as Mexico's two most powerful. At least one of the two cartels is present in nearly all of Mexico's 32 states.

Their war started in earnest last fall in Veracruz, a strategic smuggling state with a giant Gulf port.

A drug gang allied with Sinaloa left 35 bodies on a main boulevard in the city of Veracruz in September, and police found 32 other bodies, apparently killed by the same gang, a few days afterward. The goal apparently was to take over territory that had been dominated by the Zetas.

Twenty-six bodies were then found in November in Guadalajara.