5 mutilated bodies turn up near Mexico City

Five decapitated or mutilated bodies have surfaced around the capital in recent days in what authorities think may be the work of drug smugglers retaliating for a major cocaine seizure at an airport last week.

The killings are the latest in a spasm of violence that has convulsed Mexico this year as the government has led a massive crackdown on drug traffickers and the major cartels have battled for control of smuggling routes.

The severed heads of two men who worked for a private customs broker turned up near Mexico City International Airport on Saturday. Their bodies were found north of the capital on Sunday stuffed in the trunk of a Chevrolet Cavalier after neighbors alerted police to a foul smell wafting from the car.

The victims had their index fingers sliced off, news reports said. Police confirmed that at least one of the severed heads had a finger stuffed in its mouth.

On Friday, federal agents seized half a ton of cocaine at the airport that had entered Mexico on a flight from Colombia. Authorities found 500 packages of the drug hidden in a cargo shipment.

Federal police arrested two airport workers -- a customs agent and a forklift operator.

Mexico’s attorney general’s office featured photos of the impounded drugs prominently on its website, saying that the seizure represented “head-on and open combat against . . . organized crime.”

But drug traffickers appear to be responding with their own grisly message.

Three more bodies were found this week on the outskirts of Mexico City. Two of them were headless and missing an index finger, and a third had its hands chopped off, news reports said.

A spokesman for the prosecutor in the state of Mexico, where the bodies were reportedly found, would confirm only that two bodies had been discovered. He said both had been decapitated. He said neither had been identified.

Meanwhile, the government said Wednesday that suspected hit men employed by a drug cartel had killed three off-duty soldiers at a shopping mall in northern Mexico.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed about 25,000 soldiers and federal police officers to the nation’s drug-trafficking hot spots.

Officials in Mexico’s attorney general’s office said this month that they estimated about 2,500 people had been killed in drug-related violence this year.

One senior official said that the so-called Gulf cartel was responsible for many of the most violent acts because it was engaged in a campaign to take territory from its rivals.

Decapitations have become more numerous in the last two years.

Officials and analysts say the gruesome killings are, in part, an attempt to bring the methods of psychological warfare to the drug trade.

--

marla.dickerson@latimes.com