Mexican police find dismembered body of toddler

ACAPULCO, Mexico – Police in southern Mexico said Friday have found the dismembered bodies of a 2-year-old toddler and a woman in plastic bags.

The body parts were found Thursday in the city of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero.

A law enforcement official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said the boy’s leg was found at some distance from the other remains.

Chilpancingo is the city where earlier this week the severed heads of six men were found in a plastic bag on the roof of a sport utility vehicle, with six headless bodies inside.

While there was no immediate evidence of drug gang involvement, the technique of chopping up bodies and leaving them in plastic bags is frequently used by gangs and cartels.

Such violence against young children has been rare in Mexico, though older youths have often been ensnared in the drug war.

Public records released by Mexico’s Defence Department show that soldiers detained and turned over to prosecutors 4,249 people under the age of 18 between 2006 and January 2016, the decade that coincided with the drug war.

While the defence department did not specify why the youths were detained, soldiers are detailed mainly to help in the fight against organized crime, and are authorized to detain people in the act of committing a federal crime, which in most cases is weapons possession.