Zihuatanejo: Police Find 7 Bodies Dumped In Pacific Resort
Photograph of pages 22 and 23 of the 'The Code of the Knights Templar of Michoacan', in Morelia, Mexico, Tuesday, July 19, 2011. The professionally printed, pocket-size booklet was obtained by the Associated Press by a person who did not want to be identified and who said it was distributed earlier this month by two men in regular clothing aboard a bus traveling in rural Michoacan. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
ACAPULCO, Mexico — The bullet-riddled, bound bodies of seven men were dumped Sunday at a downtown bus stop in the Pacific resort town of Zihuatanejo, police said, as drug violence claimed at least 20 people this weekend along a stretch of coastal tourist destinations.
A photograph published in the local newspaper El Diario de Zihuatanejo showed signed messages lying near or on top of the bloody, half-naked men, whose feet were tied to a street pole. The messages claimed to be from The Knights Templar, an offshoot of the pseudo-religious La Familia drug cartel. Drug gangs are known for leaving threatening messages at crime scenes.
Guerrero state police said agents found the bodies early Sunday in the beach town, which is popular with both Mexican and U.S. tourists. Less than two weeks ago, 35 tortured bodies were dumped onto a main avenue in the Gulf coast seaport of Veracruz.
Police did not suggest any motives for Sunday's crime, but drug cartels have been battling each other in Pacific coast resort cities.
Police reported another homicide in Zihuatanejo hours before the bodies were dumped.
In Acapulco, just to the south of Zihuatanejo, 10 men and two women were killed in separate attacks Saturday and early Sunday, including one in which gunmen stormed a bar and shot a couple dead, police said in a statement.
Three other young men were gunned down inside a taxi cab on a popular avenue of Acapulco Saturday, police said Sunday in a news release.
Also, two gunmen shot to death a 22-year-old man near a Walmart store on the beachside avenue Costera Miguel Aleman on Saturday.
Authorities said they don't know whether the attacks are related.
Drug-related crime has increased in Acapulco and other cities in the southwestern state of Guerrero since the arrest of Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez, a Texas native captured last year who is suspected of trying to seize control of the Beltran Leyva cartel following the death of gang leader Arturo Beltran Leyva.
Mexican officials have said that the remnants of the Beltran Leyva gang appear to be fighting the Knights Templar and the Zetas cartel in Guerrero. In addition, there is evidence that Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, is moving to take back strongholds of his former allies, the Beltran Leyva cartel, the officials said.
Guerrero police chief Ramon Almonte told The Associated Press that agents have found posters at homicide scenes with threatening messages signed by the four cartels plus smaller, local gangs that work as enforcement wings.
On the Pacific coast to the north, gunmen killed three women and two men early Sunday as the victims were driving away from a supermarket in a busy area of Mazatlan city, Sinaloa's Attorney General's Office said in a statement.
