EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT - A man in military fatigues lies dead next a truck on a road after a gunbattle between rival drug gangs near the town of Ruiz, in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico,... (Associated Press) 
 
 A gunbattle between rival drug gangs in western Mexico left 29 bodies in fake military uniforms heaped across a roadway and inside bullet-riddled vehicles in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, the army said Thursday. 
 
 The bodies, all male, were found Wednesday scattered around 14 shot-up pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, two of which had bulletproofing. 
 
 Television images of the scene near the town of Ruiz showed what appeared to have been a convoy of cartel vehicles that was ambushed or engaged by another column of gunmen on a stretch of rural highway. Military-style boots, bulletproof vests, hand grenades and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found at the scene. 
 
 Federal and state officials gave conflicting reports on the incident. 
 
 Nayarit state police said officers responding to reports of a kidnapping found four wounded men at the scene of the shootout. One injured person died later, and three remain at the hospital, Nayarit officials said. 
 
 The army said two suspects wounded in the battle were found at the scene. It was unclear if the two reported by the army were included in, or additional to, the state figure. 
 
 The army said in a statement that around the same time Wednesday, soldiers engaged in a shootout with armed suspects in a town about 35 miles (60 kilometers) north of Ruiz. Two suspects _ a man and a woman _ were killed in that confrontation. The military statement did not say whether the two shootouts were related. 
 
 Nayarit's attorney general Oscar Herrera told a radio station that preliminary reports indicated the two gangs involved in the fierce highway battle were the Sinaloa and the Zetas drug cartels. He said one of the two cartels kidnapped a man of the rival gang, which resulted in a car chase and subsequent gunfight. 
 
 Nayarit and the nearby states of Michoacan and Zacatecas have become battlegrounds for drug cartels fighting for control of the area. 
 
 The Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful, has long been active in Nayarit, which borders its home base in Sinaloa state, but the gang has recently been challenged by the Zetas and by remnants of the Beltran Leyva cartel. 
 
 In nearby Michoacan state, officials said 500 marines and soldiers have been deployed to an area where at least 1,200 villagers fled their homes during three days of clashes between rival drug traffickers, which appeared to be unrelated to the Nayarit conflict. The government gave the families refuge at five shelters in two nearby towns. 
 
 The arrival of security forces Wednesday appeared to have soothed fears and hundreds of villagers decided to go back home by Thursday. Officials said only 300 people remained at the five shelters Thursday evening. 
 
 It is at least the second time a large number of rural residents have been displaced by drug violence in Mexico. In November, about 400 people in the northern border town of Ciudad Mier took refuge in the neighboring city of Ciudad Aleman following cartel gunbattles. That shelter has since been closed and most have returned to their homes. 
 
 Michoacan state Civil Defense Director Carlos Mandujano said the villagers were put up at a church, recreation center, event hall and schools in the towns of Buenavista Tomatlan and Apatzingan. 
 
 Mandujano said state authorities provided sleeping mats, blankets and food for those in the shelter. 
 
 Residents had reported after fleeing that gunbattles between rival drug cartel factions had made it too dangerous for them to stay in outlying hamlets. The latest reports said arsonists were burning avocado farms in the nearby town of Acahuato. 
 
 "We woke up with fear (on Monday), but things appeared to have quieted down. It wasn't until later that morning that we saw SUVs with armed men driving by very fast and shooting at each other," said a woman who did not want to be named for security reasons. 
 
 Several displaced people said they would stay at the shelters all week before considering going back to their villages. 
 
 "I am not scared, but my children are," said a mother, who asked not to be quoted by name because of fear of retaliation. 
 
 The fighting in Michoacan is believed to involve rival factions of the Michoacan-based La Familia drug cartel, some of whose members now call themselves "The Knights Templar." 
 
 Mexico still has fewer people displaced by violence than countries like Colombia, according to the Norway-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, which tracks such figures. It estimates about 230,000 people in Mexico have been driven from their homes, often to stay with relatives or in the United States. An estimated 3.6 million to 5.2 million people have been displaced by decades of drug- and guerrilla-war violence in Colombia. 
 
 Buenavista police chief Othoniel Montes Herrera said he has neither the manpower nor the armament to patrol rural areas frequented by drug gangs. Sending ill-armed officers out there "would be certain death, and we're not thinking of putting our personnel at that risk." 
 
 Drug violence has been on the rise in Nayarit, a Pacific Coast state known for its surfing and beach towns. In October, gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash in the capital of Tepic, an attack that police said bore the characteristics of organized crime. The bodies of 12 murder victims, eight of them partially burned, were found on a Nayarit dirt road a year ago. Officials have not identified the gangs fighting there. 
 
 And in Durango state, which borders Nayarit to the north, authorities have been excavating dozens of corpses from mass burial grounds used by drug cartel killers. 
 
 On Thursday, state police reported that two more bodies had been found in the latest excavation, bringing the total of bodies found at a seven lots in the state capital to 223. 
 
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 Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Mexico City contributed to this report. ||||| A clash between rival gangs in a prison in Mexico's north-western state of Sinaloa has left 29 inmates dead. 
 
 The killings brought the number of dead on another day of apparent drug-related violence to more than 40. 
 
 In the western state of Michoacan, 12 police officers died in an ambush by suspected drug cartel gunmen. 
 
 Michoacan and Sinaloa are home to rival drug gangs that are fighting turf wars and battling security forces. 
 
 Officials said 18 inmates had died in the Mazatlan jail in Sinaloa when members of one gang armed with pistols and an assault rifle forced their way into a cell-block holding prisoners from a rival gang and began shooting. 
 
 Eleven others had been stabbed to death as fighting broke out in other parts of the prison, they said. 
 
 Two police officers and a prison guard were wounded as they tried to stop the violence. Police and soldiers later regained control of the prison. 
 
 Continue reading the main story If we remain with our arms crossed, we will remain in the grip of organised crime, we will always live in fear President Felipe Calderon 
 
 Local media reports said some of the victims belonged to the Zetas drug gang, which has been fighting the Sinaloa cartel for control of smuggling routes. 
 
 The Sinaloa cartel is headed by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man. 
 
 Sinaloa state governor Jesus Aguilar warned last week of serious overcrowding at the prison, and asked that serious offenders be transferred. 
 
 Road blocked 
 
 Monday saw 15 police officers killed in clashes with suspected drug gang members. 
 
 Three officers were shot dead in the northern border state of Chihuahua when gunmen drew up alongside their two vehicles. 
 
 The ambush in Michoacan hit a federal police convoy as it was returning to Mexico City, officials said. 
 
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 Gunmen blocked the road with trucks and machine-gunned the police vehicles outside a school in the town of Zitacuaro. 
 
 Police say they killed and wounded some of the attackers, who fled. 
 
 Michoacan - President Felipe Calderon's home state - is the base of La Familia. 
 
 Last year the drug gang was blamed for the murder of 12 federal agents, whose tortured bodies were dumped on a highway in Michoacan. 
 
 At least 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Calderon ordered the army and federal police to combat the cartels. 
 
 In an article published on the presidency website and also in several newspapers, Mr Calderon defended his strategy. 
 
 "I am convinced that we would be in a much worse situation if we had not decided to take on the criminals," Mr Calderon wrote. 
 
 "If we remain with our arms crossed, we will remain in the grip of organised crime, we will always live in fear, our children will have no future, there will be more violence and we will lose our freedom." 
 
 On Friday, nearly 40 people were killed in two separate attacks blamed on drugs gangs - one in Ciudad Juarez on the US border, the other in Ciudad Madero in north-eastern Tamaulipas state.
– Yet another bloody battle in Mexico's drug war has left at least 29 bodies in fake military uniforms lying dead among more than a dozen bullet-riddled vehicles in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit. Investigators believe the highway battle between members of the Zetas and Sinaloa cartels began when gunmen ambushed a convoy of gang vehicles, AP reports. In the nearby state of Michoacan, up to 2,000 people were forced to flee their homes this week by days of fierce fighting between cartel factions, the BBC reports. Officials say the refugees have begun to return their homes after spending several nights in shelters. The conflict between rival factions of the La Familia cartel began Monday but news of the fighting was slow to leak out because local media, on the orders of drug cartels, have largely ceased to cover drug violence, the Wall Street Journal notes.