Women beheaded in Mexico, fourth in a week

Ciudad Juarez: Police found a woman's head in a bin bag next to a body in the street in Ciudad Juarez, in at least the fourth beheading in north Mexico since last week, justice officials said on Wednesday.

An undisclosed message was written on a card next to the body, found yesterday, the attorney general's office said, without elaborating.

Three decapitated bodies were last week hung by their feet off bridges in the border city of Tijuana, further west along the US-Mexico border. Feuding drug gangs often use spectacular killings to send messages to each other, amid a wave of drug violence which has left more than 28,000 dead since 2006, according to official figures.

More than 2,000 people have died in drug-related attacks in Ciudad Juarez this year alone, as violence has spiralled since the government launched a military crackdown on criminal gangs, involving 50,000 troops, in 2006.

A 27-year-old singer of ballads lauding drug traffickers, known as "narcocorridos," was found shot dead, along with two others, in a mountainous area of the same state of Chihuahua, prosecutors said. Fabian Ortega, known for a song about Mexico's most wanted fugitive drug boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, had been detained in 2009 carrying synthetic drugs, weapons and some USD 20,000. 

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