DURANGO, Mexico (Reuters) – Suspected drug hitmen dumped six headless bodies outside a school in northern Mexico yesterday a day after forensics pulled victims out of a nearby mass grave in a stream of unrelenting violence that is pressuring Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Assailants left the bloodied, beheaded men outside the secondary school in the colonial city of Durango just before dawn and sprayed threatening messages on a nearby wall, hours before students were due to put on a show to celebrate Mother’s Day, Durango state attorney general’s office said.
Prosecutors declined to give more details and police quickly painted over the spray-painted threats, but also confirmed the discovery on Sunday of 11 bodies in a shallow grave in the back of a mechanic’s garage in the city. It was the fourth mass grave to be found in Durango since early April. Durango, once a quiet farming and tourist city, is caught up in a war over its lucrative smuggling routes to the United States between the feared Zetas gang and Mexico’s top trafficker, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, who heads the Sinaloa cartel, the country’s biggest.
More than 38,000 people have died in drug violence across Mexico since Calderon sent the army to fight the cartels on taking office in late 2006, shocking Mexicans, testing bilateral ties with Washington and damaging Mexico’s reputation abroad as a destination for tourists and foreign investment.
Calderon says the violence is a sign that the cartels are weakened and desperate, but many Mexicans are unconvinced. Tens of thousands of people marched through Mexico City on Sunday to protest the killings, calling for an end to the bloodshed in the world‘s seventh largest oil exporter.
