Police in northwestern Mexico found 12 bullet-riddled bodies in a pickup truck Monday, as well as three men who had been shot dead in a separate case, AFP reports according to authorities.
Police in northwestern Mexico found 12 bullet-riddled bodies in a pickup truck Monday, as well as three men who had been shot dead in a separate case, AFP reports according to authorities.
The initial 12 corpses, which have not been identified, were recovered in the state of Sinaloa, the home base of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez, the state's attorney general, said they had gunshot wounds and bore signs of having been tortured.
They were found inside the double cab and rear bed of a pickup truck, which turned up in the town of San Ignacio.
Some of the bodies were dressed in black and had on tactical combat vests, according to Higuera, who said they had not yet been identified.
Members of the Zetas, a rival cartel, often wear black during armed attacks.
Police also discovered another three men who had been shot dead in a town near the resort city of Mazatlan.
Violence has flared in parts of northern Mexico since the arrest in February of the Sinaloa cartel's leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, considered the world's most powerful drug lord.
A man alleged to be the cartel's top lieutenant in the northern region of Chihuahua, Juan Carlos Lopez Lopez, was arrested on Saturday.
Some 80,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2006.