Mexico ( 6 bodies dumped by bus stop - 5 men and 1 woman - Cartel wars )

Six Bodies Found in Northern Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Six bodies were found by police Tuesday in a community outside General Enrique Estrada, a city in the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas, state officials said.

“It was learned that members of a criminal organization left six dead bodies in the community of Felix Uresti Gomez,” the Zacatecas state government said.

State police heading to the city of Rio Grande, where a law enforcement operation was planned, made the grisly discovery.

The bodies were dumped by the bus stop in the community, which is on Federal Highway 45 on the way from Fresnillo to Zacatecas city.

The victims – five men and a woman – have not been identified, officials said.

“A message was left along with the bodies, noting the fight between two rival criminal groups with a presence in the state,” the state government said.

Zacatecas, like other states in northern Mexico, has been affected by a turf war between the Gulf and Los Zetas drug cartels.

After several years on the payroll of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas, considered Mexico’s most violent criminal organization, went into the drug business on their own account and now control several lucrative territories.

The criminal organizations have been fighting for control of smuggling routes into the United States since 2010.

The war on drugs launched by former President Felipe Calderon, who was in office from 2006 to 2012, left about 70,000 people dead, or an average of 32 per day, in Mexico, officials say.

Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, deployed thousands of soldiers and Federal Police officers across the country to fight drug cartels. EFE