Twelve decapitated near Guadalajara, drug gang suspected MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Police found the decapitated and dismembered bodies of at least 12 people dumped near Mexico's second largest city, Guadalajara, in what appeared to be the latest atrocity by the country's most brutal drug cartel, a local officer said Wednesday. The bodies stuffed into two vehicles abandoned on the side of a highway had been so badly mutilated officers could not tell if they were male or female, said a policeman in the small town of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, where the corpses were found. A note by the bodies was signed by the Zetas cartel, a criminal militia led by former Mexican soldiers blamed for some of the worst recent atrocities in Mexico's drug war, the officer said. Guadalajara, known for its high-tech industry and Mexican icons including mariachi bands and tequila, has been a strategic base for drug traffickers since the 1980s. But violence has flared recently in the once-tranquil city as the Zetas moved in to challenge the smuggling turf of other gangs in western Mexico. Soldiers in March arrested a high-ranking member of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel in the city, causing his supporters to block streets with 25 burning cars and trucks. Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos lays 18 miles south of the center of Guadalajara on the road to Lake Chapala, a site popular with foreign tourists and American retirees. Attacks between the Zetas and their rivals have flared up across Mexico since the beginning of the year. On Friday, nine corpses were hanged from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo just hours before 14 bodies were dismembered and shoved into garbage bags and ice boxes. Five days of intense battles in western Sinaloa state last week also left 34 dead, adding to the body count in Mexico's drug war, which has killed more than 50,000 people in the past five years. Reporting By Lizbeth Diaz and Ioan Grillo; editing by Todd Eastham