6 strangled, 1 decapitated in Mexican resort city of Cancun

[NBCNews]

  By ReutersCANCUN, Mexico -- Six people were strangled to death and one decapitated in the southern Mexican  tourist resort of Cancun on Sunday, the state's deputy attorney general said, in  the latest mass killing to strike the city in the last few weeks.

Police  found the bodies of the five men and two women in a shack in the outskirts of  Cancun, a major tourist destination on Mexico's Caribbean coast, that has  largely escaped the drug-related violence that has racked Acapulco, a faded  tourist destination on the Pacific coast.

"It looks like the victims  were independent drug dealers without any links to any specific cartel," said  Juan Ignacio Hernandez, deputy attorney general of Quintana Roo state.  

Last month six people died and five were injured after two men opened  fire in a bar on the outskirts of Cancun.

In a separate incident, police  on Sunday found the body of another man in Cancun who had been gagged, bound and  wrapped in sheets.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has promised to  put an end to the violence that exploded after his predecessor, Felipe Calderon,  launched a military-led attack on the warring cartels.

More than 70,000  people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2007.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

NBC News