Cops found the kicking, screaming teenager with a gunshot wound dangling from a rope over a busy highway

The incident took place in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.

Police said another man alongside him was dead by the time rescuers arrived and a third was found dead below.

Witnesses told police that a group of gunmen descended from a vehicle and hanged the men off a bridge around 10am yesterday, stopping traffic along one of the busiest routes in Mexico’s third-largest city, which has been plagued by drug-gang violence.

All three of the men had been shot and tortured, and their hands were bound with duct tape, according to a Nuevo Leon state police investigator.

The dead man, estimated to be in his early 20s, dangled lifelessly in a blue shirt and plaid shorts. Bound in his hands was bound a cellphone, a possible sign that he was considered an informant.

Two other men, one with a foot cut off, were hanged by their necks from a pedestrian bridge Sunday in Monterrey. Both died.

The city has seen a spike of violence since the Gulf and Zeta cartels began fighting for control of drug traffic there two years ago.

ALSO THIS WEEK:

• In a state where the drug cartel La Familia is based, police discovered at least 26 bodies piled up at six different sites in the outskirts of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan.

Michoacan state police said the victims appeared to have been asphyxiated - either hanged or drowned - and all showed signs of torture.

• In the Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco, police unearthed 10 bodies - two women and eight men - in a mass grave, said officials.

Acapulco has become the scene of bloody cartel turf battles.

Police and soldiers dug and found the 10 bodies on Wednesday, placed them in plastic bags and transported them to Acapulco’s morgue in ambulances. Police will continue excavating Thursday, officials said.

• Mexican authorities also said on Wednesday that two men wounded in an attack on a drug rehabilitation centre in the northern city of Torreon had died, raising the number of fatalities in the incident to 13.

Coahuila state prosecutors said in a statement issued Wednesday that two assailants stormed into the centre Tuesday afternoon and opened fire.

Drug cartels are known to use rehab centres to recruit addicts and rival gangs sometimes attack. Dozens of people have died in shootings at centers across Mexico. The worst incident left 19 people dead in Chihuahua city last summer.

• More than 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence across Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels when he took office in December 2006.