LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - A woman taken into custody said that the killings were "the repercussion for what happened in Tamaulipas." The woman claimed she belonged to a local gang called Milenio, linked to the Zetas drug gang.
 
Police at first counted 12 bodies dumped in the car on a road between Mexico's second city of Guadalajara and the lakeside city of Chapala. Am anonymous phone call pointed the police to the abandoned vehicles, and the bodies were taken to forensic services in Guadalajara, a police official said.

Adding to the horrific nature of the crime was the fact that some of the bodies had been refrigerated before they were dumped.

A policeman at the scene said some victims had been so badly mutilated that officers could not determine whether they were male or female.

Steve McCraw, the Texas Director of Public Safety, says that there is a significant criminal threat from Mexico drug cartels that are smuggling drugs throughout his state and the nation.

A note by the bodies was signed by the Zetas cartel, a criminal militia led by former Mexican soldiers and blamed for some of the worst atrocities in Mexico's drug war.

Jalisco state attorney general Tomas Coronado Olmos called an urgent meeting with the state governor and said the killings appeared to have been carried out in revenge for 23 killings last Friday in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

Police found 23 bodies last week in the city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on the U.S. border, including nine hanging from a bridge and 14 others that had been decapitated.

More than 60 deaths in massacres or fighting with security forces due to suspected drug gang violence has flared in the past week alone.

Authorities blame many of the deaths on clashes between the Zetas and groups allied to the Sinaloa Federation of Mexico's most wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Police found 17 burned bodies in two cars in Culiacan, capital of northwestern Sinaloa state, before the more recent discovery.

More than 50,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive on the nation's drug gangs on taking office in December 2006. The Mexican government on Wednesday announced a new deployment of troops and federal police.

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