At least 15 bodies, some of them badly mutilated and dismembered, have been discovered in two vehicles abandoned just off the Guadalajara-Chapala highway in the municipality of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos.
According to Jalisco Attorney General Tomas Coronado Olmos, the killings were in retaliation for the recent deaths of 23 people in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. Nine of those victims were left hanging from a prominent road bridge – a disturbing image that was shown on news websites around the world.
The bodies had been stuffed into two vehicles, a Toyota Sienna and a Ford Ecosport, and left in a dirt road some 200 meters from a well-known burritos restaurant at kilometer 25 of the busy Guadalajara-Chapala highway.
A note left in one of the vehicles attributed the killings to the Zeta Cartel, officials said.
Coronado Olmos said he believed ten kidnapping victims released successfully after a police operation in Tala, Jalisco yesterday, were also destined to be slain. Fortunately, one managed to escape and alert authorities. The original idea was to disperse the 25 bodies in Chapala and Ajijic, Coronado Olmos told reporters.