Thirteen dead bodies were found Thursday near an abandoned truck on a rural path in the municipality of San Ignacio, in the north-western Mexican state of Sinaloa, local police said.
The bodies had been shot by AK-47 rifles and were found with their faces down, lined up and with their hands tied behind their backs, a spokeswoman for San Ignacio police told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"It is 13 people. They were found at 6:06 am (1106 GMT) in the San Ignacio-Coyotitan path, by a white Torton truck," she said.
The site where the bodies were found is some 1,000 kilometres north-west of Mexico City, on the Pacific coast, some 80 kilometres north of the resort of Mazatlan.
These kinds of killings are typical of organized crime. Over 5,000 people have died in Mexico since January in incidents linked to organized crime.
Other mass killings have taken place in the troubled North American country this year, including the deaths of 24 construction workers allegedly linked to the drug trade in a forest area outside Mexico City.