Mexico Under Siege

REMAINS OF 12 DECAPITATED MEN FOUND IN MEXICO

The Heads and Bodies Are Found at Separate Places in Guerrero State, a
Hot Spot in the Country's Drug War. Governor Says Eight of the Victims
Were Soldiers and One Was a Former State Police Commander.

Twelve men were decapitated and dumped at separate sites in the
southern Mexican state of Guerrero, authorities said Sunday.

Mexican news outlets quoted Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo
as saying that eight of the men were identified as Mexican soldiers
and another as a former state police commander. Earlier, Mexican media
had said that the victims' close-cropped hair indicated they were soldiers.

Nine of the heads and bodies were discovered Sunday in the city of
Chilpancingo, the state capital. The heads were bundled in a plastic
bag and dumped at a shopping center, and the bodies turned up in two
other locations at opposite ends of the city, authorities said.

Local prosecutors said three more decapitated bodies were found in a
village on the outskirts of the city, the Associated Press reported.

The find came two days after three gunmen were killed in a shootout
with soldiers in Guerrero. Mexican media said the beheadings may have
been intended as retribution.

The website of the daily El Universal newspaper, citing unnamed state
law enforcement officials, reported that a message that accompanied
the bag of heads warned: "For every one of mine you kill, I'm going to
kill 10 of yours."

Beheadings have become increasingly common around Mexico amid rising
drug-related violence that has killed more than 5,300 people this year.

President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against drug
traffickers upon taking office two years ago, triggering clashes
between security forces and gunmen and vicious feuding among rival
drug gangs.

The coastal state of Guerrero, home to the Acapulco resort, has been
one of the drug war's more violent corners. Nearly 500 people have
been killed there since January 2007, a month after Calderon announced
his anti-crime offensive, according to a tally by the University of
San Diego's Trans-Border Institute.

As part of his crackdown, Calderon has sent 45,000 soldiers and 5,000
federal police into the streets across the country. The offensive has
produced thousands of arrests and some major seizures of drugs, cash
and weapons, though there is no sign that any of the main drug gangs
have been dislodged.

Most of the killings have resulted from turf wars among
drug-trafficking organizations, which battle for the most coveted
routes for smuggling into the United States.