Inside ‘first great war’ of Narcos Mexico cartels where hitman hurled KIDS from bridge & killer clown took out drug lord

IT'S not every day you'd spot a stray dog wandering the streets clutching a bloody human arm - but for residents of Guadalajara in Mexico, it's a sight that barely raises an eyebrow.

That's because for decades the country has been ravaged by the effects of warring drug cartels, with the grim discovery of mass graves and dead bodies becoming the norm.

The third and final series of action-packed drug trafficking drama Narcos: Mexico launches on Netflix later this week.

Set in the early 1990s, as newly independent gangs struggle to survive political upheaval and escalating violence, a new generation of Mexican kingpins emerge from the Tijuana, Sinaloa and Juárez cartels.

Here, we take a closer look inside the history of some of the most notorious real-life cartels, and the horrifying violence and brutality that has followed in their wake.

Kids thrown off bridge in 'first narco war'

There are thought to be hundreds of gangs fighting for power in Mexico, and a staggering 40,000 people have disappeared amid the chaos since 2006.

In the first half of 2019, there were no less than 17,608 gangland murders - with 94 people being brutally killed every single day.

The foundations of this grisly street war were laid in the 1990s, as a bloody fight for supremacy erupted between the Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels.

Following the arrest of 'boss of bosses' Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, which was retold in the last series of Narcos: Mexico, previously-allied criminal organisations split off into factions.

Gallardo's nephews would go on to lead the Tijuana cartel, while the notorious trafficker Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada headed up the Sinaloa cartel alongside Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman.

As the two groups battled for control of Tijuana, Mexico's streets flowed with blood in the 'first great narco war', with corpses hacked apart and left hanging from bridges.

The Arellano Felix brothers, Benjamin and Ramon, reportedly tried to murder El Mayo's son, Vincente - who recently testified against the cartel - when he was just 16 years old in 1991.

Upping the stakes, El Chapo and his henchman 'El Guero' Palma tried to kill Ramon at a nightclub, but left six others dead after botching the hit.

It proved to be a fateful mistake for El Guero.

The brothers ordered a hitman to seduce his wife and infiltrate the Sinaloa cartel - when he succeeded, they told him to execute her and sent her head to their rival in a refrigerated box.

They didn't stop there, later throwing El Guero's four and five-year-old children off a 150-metre bridge in Venezuela, filming the deaths on a videotape for him.

Meanwhile, El Chapo became the face of Mexico's drugs trade when he was blamed for the death of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas during a cartel gunfight at Guadalajara Airport in 1993.

Arrested later that year, the drug boss later shot to fame for twice escaping maximum-security prisons in Mexico, once by digging a mile-long tunnel from his cell.

By the early Noughties, the Felix brothers' influence was waning. Ramon was shot dead at a carnival in 2002, while Benjamin was arrested a week later and sentenced to 25 years behind bars.

Another brother, Rafael Arellano, was gunned down by a hitman dressed as a clown in 2013 in California.

But as the Sinaloa cartel grew to become one of the most fearsome criminal organisations in the world, another was waiting to steal its crown.

Next generation of killers dig mass graves

Today, the most bloodthirsty gang in Mexico is the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Founded in 2009, they have been known to rip out victims' hearts, dissolve bodies in barrels of acid, and once even shot down an army helicopter, killing six soldiers.