Mexican soldiers have found the bullet-ridden, mutilated corpses of nine men on a highway that runs next to the U.S. border. The killings were the latest in a series of massacres and drug cartel battles this month that resembled scenes from the darkest days of Mexico’s 2006-2012 drug war.
The Defense Department said it found the nine bodies Tuesday on a highway outside of Miguel Aleman, across the border from Roma, Texas. The area has been fought over by rival cartels for more than a decade, usually by the Gulf cartel and the old Zetas cartel, and later a remnant of that group, the Northeast Cartel.
While some of the corpses had military-style clothing, there was no immediate confirmation on which gang they may have belonged to. Most had bullet wounds, but some also appear to have been hacked into or shot so many times their organs spilled onto the roadway, authorities said..
The discovery came five days after the bullet-ridden bodies of 18 men were discovered after what appeared to have been a shootout between members of rival drug cartels in the north-central state of Zacatecas.
