Police found 18 dismembered and beheaded bodies inside two vans in an area frequented by tourists near the city of Guadalajara in western Mexico, authorities said Wednesday. 
 
 Jalisco state Prosecutor Tomas Coronado said earlier police found 15 severed human heads in the vans a few miles from Lake Chapala and his office confirmed later in a statement that three more heads had been found along with the other body parts. 
 
 "The bodies are dismembered," Coronado said in an interview transcript provided by his office. He said authorities received a phone call alerting them to the presence of two minivans on a dirt access road near Lake Chapala, which is popular with tourists and American retirees. 
 
 The vehicles were towed to government offices to unload the bodies. 
 
 The area has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Jalisco New Generation gang, allied with the Sinaloa cartel, and the Zetas drug cartel. 
 
 Mexican drug cartels frequently dismember the bodies of their victims or leave them stuffed into vehicles. The gangs also frequently leave hand-written messages alongside their victims' bodies, and Coronado said that such messages were found in the vans. 
 
 "They are clearly messages between rival groups that are in conflict," Coronado said. 
 
 Coronado also said the killings may have been linked to the abduction of 12 people who later escaped in the same area on Tuesday. A woman who was allegedly watching the captives was detained. She told investigators that the kidnappings were "a repercussion of what happened in Tamaulipas." 
 
 That was an apparent reference to the slayings of 23 people whose bodies were found Friday in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, in northern Tamaulipas state. The bodies were found hanging from a bridge or decapitated and dumped near city hall Friday in Nuevo Laredo, where drug cartels are fighting an escalating turf war. 
 
 Messages were found in Nuevo Laredo threatening the Gulf cartel, which has joined Sinaloa to battle the Zetas. The killings could be part of a wide-ranging, tit-for-tat battle between Sinaloa and the Zetas, in which both sides have been known to massacre dozens of people accused of supporting the rival gang. ||||| Police found 18 mutilated, headless bodies near a lake popular with tourists and American retirees just outside Guadalajara, Mexico, a massacre that authorities blamed on the Zetas drug cartel. 
 
 A phone call alerted police to two vans on a dirt road near Lake Chapala early Wednesday morning. When police opened the van, they found 18 headless and dismembered bodies inside. Some were so badly mutilated that police have still not determined their gender. The bodies appear to have been refrigerated after death. 
 
 Handwritten messages were found in the van. "They are clearly messages between rival groups that are in conflict," said Tomas Coronado, prosecutor for the state of Jalisco. Officials said the notes were signed by the Zetas. 
 
 PHOTOS of Mexican drug cartel violence. 
 
 Los Zetas have been battling the Jalisco New Generation gang, a minor cartel allied with the Sinaloa cartel, which is the Zetas chief rival for dominance of the Mexican drug trade. The Zetas cartel, which was founded by ex-members of the Mexican military, controls most of eastern Mexico and much of the north. 
 
 A woman detained yesterday in connection with the separate kidnapping of 12 people in the same area told police that the abductions were connected to events in Tamaulipas state. Two dozen men and women were found decapitated or hanging from bridges in Nuevo Laredo, on the border with Texas, on Friday, where the Zetas are battling the Gulf cartel, another Sinaloa cartel ally. 
 
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– There's no end in sight to the horrific tit-for-tat Mexican drug cartel murders. In the latest atrocity, some 18 decapitated and dismembered corpses were found dumped in two cars near a lake in Guadalajara popular with tourists and retired Americans, reports ABC. The bodies, which were so badly mutilated that investigators have not been able to determine the gender of all the victims, appeared to have been refrigerated after death. Police believe the slaughter was the work of the Zetas cartel, which is waging a bloody turf war against the Sinaloa cartel in the area. The killings have been linked to the attempted kidnap of 12 people in the area earlier in the week, AP reports. A woman arrested after the victims escaped told investigators the kidnappings where "a repercussion of what happened in Tamaulipas" state, where the corpses of nine men and women were found hanging from a Nuevo Laredo bridge last Friday and the heads of another 14 people were dumped in front of city hall.