MEXICO CITY, (AP) — The dismembered body of a woman was found scattered in a leafy, upscale Mexico City district, while authorities investigated possible drug gang links in the deaths of five females whose throats were slashed in Acapulco.

The mass slaying of women is unusual in Mexico’s drug war, and there was no indication the cases in the two cities were related.

Residents of the capital’s tree-lined San Miguel Chapultepec neighbourhood discovered the woman’s upper body on one block and her left leg and right leg on two other blocks, the city prosecutor’s office said Saturday. The fingers of her left hand had been cut off.

The prosecutors’ office provided no details on the woman’s identity or a possible motive for the killing. Officials did not return requests for comment yesterday.

Mexico City has been somewhat of an oasis from the cartel violence engulfing border states, but a spate of recent killings and decapitations has residents fearing the drug war is encroaching.

In Acapulco, police said they were not ruling out drug or organised crime links possibly related to prostitution in the killings of four women and a 14-year-old girl whose bodies were found Saturday.

All five worked at a beauty parlor in a neighbourhood known for prostitution and drug dealing, the chief of detectives for the Guerrero state police told The Associated Press yesterday.

“It’s an area with many social problems,” Fernando Monreal Leyva said.

“On the second floor where the events occurred — in this case, the beauty parlour — a massage parlour was found where sexual acts may have been performed, although this is still under investigation,” Monreal Leyva said.

The teenage girl had begun working at the salon five days prior to her death, he added.

Three of the bodies were found at the salon located outside the tourist district. They had been stripped of their clothes and their hands and feet were tied, police said.

The other two victims were found separately in other parts of Acapulco — one in an abandoned car and the other on a street behind a church. All of the women were 30 years old or younger.

Police had no suspects or motives and were trying to determine whether all of the women were killed at the same spot, Monreal Leyva said.

In another Guerrero state resort town, Zihuatanejo, a severed head was found Sunday on a street outside the central bus terminal.

Guerrero state has seen a spike in violence since rival factions of the Beltran Leyva cartel began fighting over territory following the December 2009 death of capo Arturo Beltran Leyva in a gunbattle with Mexican marines.