TIJUANA - SEVENTEEN bodies were found in Mexico's northern border areas on Tuesday, including a male corpse wearing a diaper and another dressed in women's clothes in the city of Tijuana, officials said.

'One had a pacifier hanging around his neck and was only wearing a diaper, while the second was dressed as a woman,' said Jose Manuel Yepiz, spokesman for the prosecutor's office of northwestern Baja California state.

Police found a total of five bodies in the border city across from San Diego in the United States, and 12 others in the violent state of Chihuahua, including one decapitated body and three that had been tortured.

Violence has escalated in Mexico this year as drug gangs fight each other and authorities amid a government crackdown, launched almost two years ago, including the deployment of some 36,000 soldiers across the country.

The country's top prosecutor said Monday that drug gang-related killings had more than doubled in 2008, compared with the same period last year, to 5,376. -- AFP