15 beheaded of 23 dead in Acapulco: police

ACAPULCO: Twenty-three people were murdered Saturday in the beach resort of Acapulco, including 15 decapitated men found near a shopping center, authorities said, in latest onslaught in Mexico's brutal drug wars.

Police responding to a report of a fire shortly after midnight instead found five abandoned vehicles and the bodies of 15 men who had been beheaded, they said. Messages whose contents were not disclosed were left with the bodies.

"On the sidewalk of the Plaza Senderos shopping center were the decapitated bodies of 15 males, between 25 and 30 years of age," a police report said.

"The heads were found in one single place, with the exception of one that was half severed from the body and with an impact of a projectile from a firearm."

Another six murder victims were found inside a taxi near a supermarket, and two other men were murdered in other parts of the city, police said in a statement.

Inside the taxi, "the bodies of six men were found -- one in the passenger seat, three in the back seat and two inside the trunk" of the car, the statement said.

The latest killings bore the hallmarks of the vicious gangland slayings that have terrorized large areas of Mexico as drug cartels battle it out among themselves and with security forces.

More than 30,000 people have been killed since 2006 when the government of President Felipe Calderon launched a major military crackdown against the drug gangs. Last year alone, a record 12,000 murders were blamed on the drug violence.