TIJUANA (Mexico) - NINE decapitated bodies were found on Sunday in a vacant lot in the Mexican city of Tijuana close to the border with the United States, in the latest gruesome attack involving drug cartels, local officials said.

The crime is part of a turf war between rival cartels for control of Tijuana, across the border from the US city of San Diego, according to Jose Manuel Yepiz, attorney general for the state of Baja California.

Five other murders were committed in Tijuana since Saturday.

Mexico's border region from Tijuana east to Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas has seen most of the drug cartel-related violence that has killed 350 people since early September.

The region hosts key supply routes to export drugs to the United States, the world's biggest consumer of cocaine, which is exclusively produced in Latin America at a rate of 950 tonnes per year.

More than 4,500 people have been murdered in Mexico, mostly in drug gang warfare, since early 2008.

Ciudad Juarez, considered the country's most dangerous city, has had 1,300 victims.

The federal government has launched a war against drug trafficking that has seen the deployment of some 36,000 military personnel across the country, especially in the north.

President Felipe Calderon's government is also in the grip of a major corruption scandal that recently saw its anti-drug czar and several top police officers arrested for allegedly being on the drug cartels' payroll to the tune of US$150,000-US$450,000 (S$228,366 - S$685,102) per month. -- AFP