Senior Mexican drug cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano has apparently been killed in a fight with marines in the northern border state of Coahuila, the navy said.

Mexico says it has captured one of the country’s most-wanted drug traffickers, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, known as “El Taliban”.

Forty-nine bodies with their heads, hands and feet hacked off were found dumped on a northern Mexico highway in what appeared to be the latest carnage in the escalating war between Mexico’s two dominant drug cartels.

MEXICAN drug gangs branching out into new criminal activity are earning a steady stream of cash from the mass kidnapping of migrants, making the already arduous journey to the United States even more lethal.

AT least 25 suspected drug gang members were killed in an army raid in rural northeastern Mexico, the army said in a press release.