NUEVO CENTRO, Mexico: Police found 12 bodies tortured, executed and dumped on the side of an isolated highway in western Mexico early yesterday, the latest victims of an ongoing feud between rival drug cartels.

A threatening message likely written by drug gangs was found near the bound and beaten bodies of 11 men and one woman piled up and wrapped in a tarp, said police at the scene.

"It seems they were all killed by gunshots," said an official at the Michoacan state prosecutors office. "It is a place in the middle of nowhere."