Police found eight bodies that were decomposing inside a car abandoned at a water park in northern Mexico, a day after authorities in a neighboring state located 14 bodies stuffed inside a car.
The latest grisly find was in the city of Fresno, near a store where police had seized the drugs, the Zacatecas state government said in a statement. The decomposed bodies were left there a few days, he said.
Zacatecas is a largely rural state that has seen an increase in drug cartel violence in the past two years, as the band of the Zetas pushed south from their base of operations along the Texas-Mexico border.
Drug violence has killed more than 47,500 people since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels in Mexico when he took office in December 2006.
Horrific mass murders continue in parts of northern and western Mexico. On Thursday, police in neighboring San Luis Potosi found the dead bodies of 14 men crammed into a four-wheel drive vehicle near a gas station.
Federal police said Friday a man who escaped from the 4WD told investigators he had played dead and then escaped when armed men stopped at a service station. He hid in the nearby hills until the state police officers helped him and took him to a hospital.
Also Friday, five gunmen were killed during a clash with the federal police in the western state of Michoacan, the Federal Department of Public Safety, said in a statement.
Federal agents were in a drug operation when they were attacked by gunmen hiding in the hills above the village of Holland, part of the municipality of Apatzingan, the department said.
The attackers opened fire and threw grenades at federal agents who came to the area by land and air to help their colleagues. They also blocked roads and streets with burned cars to prevent the deployment the federal police said. The department did not say which group is suspected in the attack, but the poster of the Knights Templars, a band of a Mexican drug cult, are known to operate in the area.
