MEXICO CITY (AP) — Authorities in northern Mexico said Wednesday they found the bodies of two abducted police officers hanging from an overpass, and the bodies of seven people shot to death in a neighboring city.

The public safety department in Zacatecas state said the policemen’s bodies were found Wednesday morning in the state capital, also known as Zacatecas. They were members of the police force of the neighboring state of San Luis Potosi who had been reported missing hours earlier.

Drug cartels have hung the bodies of victims from overpasses before as a message to rivals or authorities, but seldom do so with members of law enforcement.

In the nearby city of Fresnillo, police later found the bullet-ridden bodies of four women and three men. One man and a woman were found wounded at the scene of the attack, along with five children who had not been wounded.

Zacatecas, once dominated by the old Zetas cartel, has been the scene of turf battles between a number of cartels.

The killings in Zacatecas came one day after prosecutors in Mexico’s most violent state, Guanajuato, reported seven men were shot to death at a mechanic’s shop. The state prosecutors’ office said the shop specialized in repairing motorcycles.

Guanajuato has Mexico’s highest number of homicides, and has been the scene of turf battles between the Jalisco drug cartel and local gangs backed by the Sinaloa cartel.

There was no immediate information on a possible motive in the shootings, but such attacks in Guanajuato in the past have been related to rivalries between drug gangs or street-level drug dealing.

The battle for control of Guanajuato, and industrial and farming hub, have continued despite increased efforts by police and the National Guard to contain the fighting.

In recent months, the Jalisco cartel kidnapped several members of an elite state police force, tortured them to obtain names and addresses of fellow officers and began hunting down and killing police at their homes, on their days off, in front of their families.

News from © The Associated Press, 2021