MORELIA (Mexico) - MEXICAN police on Tuesday found the remains of six people tortured and shot to death in a western state that is a focus of the government's war against drug cartels.
Police found the bodies of five men in a hole on a remote dirt road near the city of Apatzingan, Michoacan, the state prosecutor's office said in a statement. The bodies were blindfolded, gagged and showed signs of torture and multiple gunshot wounds - trademarks of drug-related homicides.
Authorities said they also found a severed head - drug traffickers frequently decapitate their victims - belonging to a sixth person and bullet casings from assault rifles. None of the bodies has been identified.
More than 10,800 people have been killed by drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide crackdown on organized crime in late 2006.
Michoacan has been a major focus of the crackdown. Last month, federal agents arrested 10 mayors in the state accused of protecting La Familia cartel. Fidel Calderon, Michoacan state secretary, announced on Tuesday that his government was officially firing more than a dozen state officials and police chiefs charged with links to organized crime.
He added, however, that three mayors released on Monday will be allowed to return to office. The mayors of the western towns of Coahuayana, Buenavista and Aquila were let go after spending more than a month in jail, the federal Attorney General's Office said.
Elsewhere, at least five people died Monday in several drug-related slayings in the Gulf coast port of Veracruz, said Veracruz state prosecutor Salvador Mikel.
Also on Tuesday, customs officials announced three major drug seizures: In the Pacific port city of Manzanillo, authorities found nearly 450 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a shipment of tires from Colombia.
In the border city of Nuevo Laredo, customs agents found more than 545 kg of marijuana. And at the Mexico City International Airport, officials discovered 150 kg of pseudophedrine pills in a shipment of medical supplies from Bangladesh. Pseudophedrine, a chemical found in cold medicines, is used to make methamphetamine and is banned in Mexico. -- AP
