MEXICAN police arrested the suspected leader of a brutal drug gang called ‘The Hand with Eyes’ and he has confessed to helping carry out or ordering more than 600 murders, authorities said.

A gun battle between rival drug gangs in western Mexico has left 29 men dead.

Mexican marines captured Sergio Villarreal Barragan, a presumed leader of the embattled Beltran Leyva cartel who appears on a list of the country’s most-wanted fugitives, in a raid in the central state of Puebla, the government said.

A judge has ordered a US-born suspected drug lord known as “La Barbie” to be held for 40 days pending an investigation into organised crime, Mexican authorities said today.

ONE of Mexico’s most-wanted drug smugglers, whose nickname “la burra” — female donkey — belies his power as the alleged trafficker controlling drugs in the northern city of Monterrey, has been captured.