Mexican police have found seven dismembered bodies in a Pacific coast state where the country's most-wanted man is battling its most aggressive drug cartel

The Attorney General's Office said that the bodies were found in Sinaloa along with a message accusing authorities of cooperating with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Guzman is head of the Sinaloa cartel, and the letter's wording suggests it may have been written by the Zetas cartel. The bodies were discovered stuffed into 13 black garbage bags and dumped on a footpath in a residential area. The Zetas have launched tit-for-tat attacks on Sinaloa strongholds since Sinaloa cartel gunmen and their allies moved in on Zetas turf in the Gulf coast states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas. Recently, suspected Zetas took the unusual step of using an airplane to drop thousands of leaflets accusing Sinaloa's governor of taking orders from Guzman. Guzman, who has long been recognized as Mexico's most powerful drug capo, was included on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion. He escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry truck and has a $7 million bounty on his head. Authorities say that his Sinaloa cartel has recently been expanding his drug business abroad, building international operations in Central and South America and the Pacific. The Zetas were founded by former soldiers who defected from the Mexican military in 1998 to work as hired killers for drug traffickers. They have since carved out their own smuggling empire, expanded massively across Mexico and diversified into kidnapping, extortion and theft of crude oil.