Residents of El Aguaje, Michoacán, say the smell of at least seven decomposing bodies has permeated their neighborhood due to cartel violence on the weekend.

The dead civilians, believed to have belonged to the Viagras crime gang, have been left to rot inside shot-up homes and on the streets in the community, located in the municipality of Agulilla in the Terra Caliente region.

The victims were likely killed in confrontations between Los Viagras and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in recent days.

As a result of ongoing violence, the neighborhood has almost become a ghost town as hundreds of residents have fled the former agricultural community where there is now no electricity, water or internet, according to the newspaper El Universal.

Businesses have also been boarded up in what has become a gangster battlefield. 

Gun battles have been going on for months and only those who had nowhere else to go — and the dead — remain. 

A clash last Friday between gangsters and the military in the Aguililla-Buenavista-Tepalcatepec corridor left five of the former killed during a battle that lasted several hours, the army said.

Since the weekend, outbreaks of gunfire have been frequent.

Residents who remain say the Jalisco cartel left a message on one of the dead bodies of a rival cartel member, claim responsibility for his killing.

El Aguaje is the birthplace of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” leader of the CJNG, who is on the list of most wanted criminals in both Mexico and the United States.

Source: El Universal (sp), La Silla Rota (sp)