Mexico: Bodies found hanging from bridges

Two dead men have been found hanging by their hands off highway bridges around the northern Mexico city of Monterrey in less than 24 hours, police said Tuesday, in a display characteristic of Mexico's drug cartels.

Meanwhile, a new report claims that American guns are fueling the bloodshed in Mexico.

The report, "Halting U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico" by Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer and Sheldon Whitehouse, claims that at least 70 percent of the guns recovered by Mexican authorities in 2009 and 2010 can be traced back to the United States, according to the Atlantic Wire.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has made repeated requests for stricter gun laws to prevent continued bloodshed, the Atlantic writes, though the senators' report "takes a strong position on Congress's inaction in quelling the flow of American assault rifles."

According to the Atlantic:

Calderon blames the United States, at least for the guns. Though the proportionate amount of weapons coming out of the U.S. has dropped to 70 percent from the 85 percent reported in 2009, it's tough to argue against the Mexican president Along those lines, the American ban on assault rifles lifted in 2004 contributed to the spike in bloodshed.

The report "recommends stricter laws around assault rifles, especially military-style weapons imported from Eastern Europe, and points to gun shows as a source of these types of weapons."

In Mexcio, meantime, the burned body of a man was found Monday hung from a bridge in Monterrey, police said, the AP reports.

The second man was found in the nearby town of Guadalupe early Tuesday. Witnesses say he was hung from the bridge at around 7 a.m. after being shot and killed. Police reportedly found him in the river below because the rope had snapped.

Gang killings are often carried out in daylight in view of drivers on busy streets below.

Last week in Monterrey, two men were found dead and a teenage boy shot and hanged by his arms but alive in the same spot where the burned man was found Monday.

Mexico has seen unprecedented gang violence, with more than more than 40,000 killed, since Calderon stepped up the fight against drug trafficking in December 2006, deploying thousands of troops and federal police to cartel strongholds.

Last Thursday alone, five people were killed in a nightclub in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, 21 bodies were scattered around the streets of the western Mexican city of Morelia, in Michoacan state, and 10 bodies were found in mass graves in the resort city of Acapulco, DPA reports.

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