Authorities found six severed heads along a road in a part of central Mexico where such extreme violence is rare, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The remains were first reported by drivers using a road that links the states of Puebla and Tlaxcala, the prosecutors said.

Another head and other human remains were found in the western city of Colima, news outlets said Tuesday.

The heads found in Tlaxcala were those of men, the prosecutor's office said as it announced an investigation into the crime.

Local media said that at the site of grisly find there was a pamphlet blaming the violence on a settling of scores between gangs that rob fuel. Messages are often left on victims' bodies by cartels seeking to threaten their rivals or punish behavior they claim violates their rules.

Both Puebla and Tlaxcala are to home to gangs that deal in drugs and fuel. But these states are new to this kind of extreme violence more common in other parts of Mexico, which is plagued by drug-related brutality.

However in recent months bodies have been found in areas near the border between the two states.

Extreme violence -- such as decapitation -- is more common in northern states and along the Pacific coast. Drug cartels operate in both.

On June 30, authorities found 20 bodies along a road in northwest Sinaloa state, five of them headless.

In April 2024, authorities in Mexico found seven bodies with five of them decapitated and another completely dismembered — with a message on each corpse — in a car left in the middle of traffic on a main expressway.

In April 2022, the severed heads of six men were reportedly discovered on top of a Volkswagen abandoned on a busy boulevard in southern Mexico. According to local authorities, a warning sign was reportedly strung from two trees was also found at the gruesome scene.

The month before that, six heads and other body parts were found on the roof of a car on the main street of Chilapa in the southern state of Guerrero.

Around 480,000 people have died in drug-related violence around Mexico since 2006, when the government deployed federal troops to take on the country's powerful drug cartels. Another 130,000 are missing.

Last week, Mexico sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the United States in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up pressure on criminal networks smuggling drugs across the border.

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump directed the military to target drug cartels in Latin America, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News. It's not clear if or when the military could take action.

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum responded by saying there would be "no invasion of Mexico."

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