Human skulls found wrapped in tin foil inside package bound for US

The authorities at a Mexican airport found four human skulls inside a package that was being shipped to the United States on Sunday.

Mexico's National Guard officers were called to the airport after an X-ray detected strange objects in a cardboard box at an airport in the city of Queretaro. The human skulls were neatly wrapped in plastic and aluminium foil before being put in a box to be shipped off.

According to a report in The Mirror, the package was shipped from the southern city of Apaztingan, in Michoacan state, and was to reach an address in Manning, South Carolina.

A special permit from a competent health authority is required to ship human remains, and such permission was not taken in this case, according to the National Guard.

Michoacan is one of the most violent regions in Mexico. In 2018, the US government put it on the list of the most dangerous places in the country. In recent years, it has suffered some of the worst drug-related violence that has plagued Mexico.

Extortion and assassinations became so widespread that armed civilian militias were deputised by the government to combat the dominant Knights Templar cartel. But even some of these militias have themselves been implicated in drug trafficking.

In 2017, an Irish tourist was shot dead during a carjacking in Mexico after stopping to ask for directions to the beach. The 29-year-old man, who was travelling with his American girlfriend, had pulled into a petrol station at Lazaro Cardenas in the Pacific coastal state of Michoacan, to ask the way to the seafront. The man was shot several times, dragged from the vehicle, and dumped by the side of the road.

At least 20 people were killed in a mass shooting in Michoacan earlier this year. It was one of the deadliest attacks to have taken place in recent years. The gunmen targeted a gathering in the town of Las Tinajas in Michoacan state, which has also been plagued by turf wars between rival gangs.