4 handcuffed bodies found in burned-out wreckage of helicopter in Mexico with hand-written “criminal messages”

The bound bodies of four people were found Friday in the burned-out wreckage of a helicopter in Mexico’s Gulf coast Huasteca region, along with signs indicating they were killed by a drug gang, authorities said.

The killings were the second act of grisly violence in a month in the region.

Prosecutors in the northern state of San Luis Potosi said the private helicopter was normally used to transport tourists. They said the craft did not appear to have crashed, but rather had apparently been intentionally set afire. They said the four victims were found handcuffed.

The grim discovery was made in Agua Buena, in the township of Tamasopo, near a well-known series of waterfalls.

Prosecutors said they found “several sheets of cardboard with criminal messages,” but did not reveal their contents. Such hand-lettered messages are frequently left by drug cartels in Mexico to threaten or intimidate their rivals.

The Huasteca region has long been popular with Mexican tourists for its waterfalls and crystalline rivers.

In early June, authorities in San Luis Potosi found the bodies of seven men dumped on a road in a nearby part of the Huasteca region, in the township of Aquismon.

Photos of the bodies showed extensive bruising on the corpses, suggesting they had been beaten.

Writing scrawled in markers on the corpses said, “This is what happened to me for working with the Gulf” – an apparent reference to the Gulf cartel, which operates mainly along the U.S. border to the north.

The messages were signed “Valles Operation O.B.,” apparently a reference to a rival gang.

In May, the Justice Department said that former Gulf Cartel leader Mario Cardenas-Guillen was extradited to Texas on drug trafficking charges.

The cartel uses “intimidation and extreme violence to maintain control of its territories in northeast Mexico and smuggle deadly drugs into communities across the United States,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said.

According to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, the Gulf Cartel was the main competitor challenging Sinaloa for trafficking routes in the early 2000s, but it now battles its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas, and Zeta Cartel splinter groups over territory in northeastern Mexico.

Since December 2006, when the government launched a controversial military anti-drug operation, Mexico has recorded more than 340,000 murders, according to official figures.

Italian hotelier shot dead in southern Mexico

An Italian businessman and owner of a well-known hotel in southern Mexico was shot and killed in the town of Palenque where he lived, local authorities said.

The prosecutor’s office of the southernmost state of Chiapas said Raphael Alessandro Tunesi was shot midday Friday as he prepared to pick up his daughters from school.

“Police officers who arrived found him inside a vehicle… with several bullet wounds,” the office said.

Tunesi had been living in Chiapas for several years and was considered an expert on Mayan culture.

Together with his Mexican wife, he owned the Quinta Chanabnal, a luxury hotel inspired by nearby Mayan ruins, and which has been the scene of film shoots.

A family friend who asked not to be named for security reasons told AFP that Tunesi was highly respected in the Palenque community.

The friend said organized crime groups had been demanding extortion payments from merchants and businesses in the area, an important center of Mayan culture and whose archeological riches draw tourists from Mexico and abroad.

Officials said an investigation into the killing has been launched.

In states throughout Mexico, attacks against businesses have multiplied in what authorities say could be reprisals for refusal to pay extortion demanded by crime syndicates.

On May 24, attacks against two bars and a hotel in the city of Celaya, in central Mexico’s Guanajuato state, left 11 people dead.

AFP contributed to this report.