Twenty bodies, several of them decapitated, were found on a highway bridge in a part of Mexico where factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel are fighting each other, authorities said Monday.
Four headless corpses were found by the roadside while 16 bodies were discovered inside an abandoned vehicle, the Sinaloa state prosecutor’s office said.
Five human heads were found inside a bag at the scene.
Violence has soared in the northwestern state since the capture in the United States almost a year ago of cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
The veteran drug trafficker claimed he was kidnapped in Mexico by a son of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and flown to the U.S. in a private plane against his will.
The conflict, which has left more than 1,200 people dead according to official figures, pits gang members aligned with Zambada against others loyal to El Chapo and his sons, who lead a faction called the “Chapitos.”
The Chapitos have used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers,” according to a 2023 indictment released by the U.S. Justice Department.
In recent months, bodies have appeared across Sinaloa, often left slung out on the streets or in cars with either sombreros on their heads or pizza slices or boxes pegged onto them with knives. The pizzas and sombreros have become informal symbols for the warring cartel factions, underscoring the brutality of their warfare.
Criminal violence, most of it linked to drug trafficking, has claimed around 480,000 lives in Mexico since 2006 and left more than 120,000 people missing.