Dozens slain in Acapulco

ACAPULCO, Mexico – The bodies of 15 men, all but one of them headless, were found on a street outside a shopping center in Acapulco on Saturday as police reported 27 people slain in the Pacific resort in less than a day.

The decapitated victims, all of whom appeared to be in their 20s, were discovered in an area not frequented by tourists.

Handwritten signs left with the bodies were signed by “El Chapo’s People” – a reference to the Sinaloa cartel, headed by drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman – said Fernando Monreal Leyva, director of investigative police for Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located.

The narco-messages indicated the Sinaloa cartel killed them for trying to intrude on the gang’s turf and extort residents. Authorities said at least three minors were among the dead.

Mexico’s drug cartels have increasingly taken to beheading their victims in a grisly show of force, but Saturday’s discovery was the largest single group of decapitation victims found in recent years.

Acapulco has been the site of fierce battles between drug gangs, and this weekend got off to a bloody start with 27 people killed there Friday evening to early Saturday, Leyva said.

The dead included two police officers cut down on a main bayside avenue in front of tourists and locals; six people who were shot dead and stuffed in a taxi, their hands and feet bound; and four others elsewhere in the city. Two police officers were wounded when armed men attacked a police post in the city’s Emiliano Zapata district.

At least 30,196 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against cartels in late 2006.