http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... ml&src=rssURUAPAN, Mexico (Reuters) - An armed gang of suspected drug traffickers wearing ski masks threw five human heads onto the dance floor of a bar in western Mexico on Wednesday in an apparent revenge killing, prosecutors said.
Wielding handguns and rifles, some 20 men dressed in black drove up to the Luz y Sombra (Light and Shade) club on the edge of the city of Uruapan, in Michoacan state, shortly after midnight, barged inside and fired shots in the air.
They forced late-night revelers to lie on the floor and pulled the five male heads out of plastic bags, dumping them on the dance floor along with a handwritten message, a spokesman for the Michoacan state prosecutor's office said.
The gruesome incident highlighted the challenge facing the next president, Felipe Calderon, in ending drug violence. A court named Calderon, a native of Michoacan, president-elect on Tuesday after a contested election in July.
"What's likely behind this are problems stemming from drug trafficking," a spokesman for the local attorney general's office said. He said the killings could be revenge for the murder in the same city on Sunday of two women, one of whom was beheaded and had a finger sliced off.
The handwritten note called the attack "divine justice."
"The family does not kill for money. It does not kill women or innocent people. Those who die are those who must die. Everyone should know that this is divine justice," it read.
Relatives who came to identify three of the victims denied they were involved in crime, local police chief Ramon Ponce said. "One was an avocado picker, one was a mechanic and one was unemployed. They weren't wealthy people," he told Reuters.
Two of the victims have yet to be identified and police have not found the rest of the five bodies.
Surrounded by mountains and avocado groves, Uruapan was quiet until about 10 years ago when drug gangs based in nearby villages began competing for business, local residents say.
The Luz y Sombra bar has plastic chairs and tables and offers an escort service and table dancers.
Gabriel Solorio, manager of a bar underneath it, said locals understood the violence was score-settling between drug traffickers and not directed at outsiders, but said, "Everyone feels scared."
Thirteen people have been decapitated this year in Michoacan, which has a long and sparsely populated Pacific coastline and is used by traffickers shipping cocaine and marijuana to the United States.
A severed head was dumped in Acapulco in June, marking a surge in drug violence before the July election.
On Tuesday, gunmen shot and killed a senior policeman in front of a church in the state of Nuevo Leon, south of Texas.
