Mexico City/Tijuana  - A Mexican Army raid on a 15th birthday party in Tijuana on the US border netted a diverse group of suspects including an alleged drug boss, police, the governor's former bodyguards and even apparently innocent waiters.

In total, some 60 people were arrested Sunday, including Angel Jacome Gamboa, a former police officer from Playas de Rosarito who allegedly works for a rising drug boss.

Jacome Gamboa, 29, was carrying a gold-handled gun with initials engraved on the barrel linking him to an even bigger player in the illicit drug trade, Teodoro Garcia Simental, whose name has been connected to various drug gangs, the National Defence Ministry said.

On Sunday, soldiers arrived at 1:30 am at the Mezzanine party hall, where they followed what has become a familiar pattern for the Army of raiding christenings, birthdays and funerals to make mass drug arrests. At one event, even the band was arrested.

Carmen Garcia, an employee for the facility in Tijuana, said many of those arrested are "decent, working people."

"They are waiters, bartenders, maitre d's, all those in charge of the hall. They are not criminals," she stressed.

But Mexico's National Defence Ministry said that 26 of those arrested have evident ties to organized crime, while 32 others have suspected ties. Four others were arrested later, at a different place, where they were holding a kidnapped hostage.

The arrests on Sunday began another bloody week in Mexico's drug wars. On Tuesday, Mexican police found five human heads in portable coolers on a road in Ixtlahuacan del Rio, some 600 kilometres northwest of Mexico City. Warnings were hand written on the coolers.

Some 6,300 people were killed last year in Mexico in incidents that the authorities link to organized crime and drug gangs. Since January, over 1,000 have been killed in similar circumstances.

In the Tijuana arrests, it seemed unlikely that Jacome Gamboa, 29, would walk free. The letters engraved on his golden gun were "El Teo" and "El 3 Letras."

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "El Teo" is part of the structure of the Tijuana drug Cartel. However, the authorities in the northern Mexican state of Baja California said he has split with that group and is now with the Sinaloa Cartel.

"El Teo" or "El Tres Letras" - the "three-letter man" - has made headlines in recent months. One of the most gory cases involved the arrest of a man, Santiago Meza Lopez, who confessed to being part of the operations of Teodoro Garcia Simental - "El Teo" himself.

Meza Lopez was charged with dissolving some 300 bodies in acid for "El Teo." He bragged about turning their bodies to "pozol" or thick soup by calling himself "El Pozolero de El Teo."

Gamboa, the man arrested in Tijuana with the engraved gold gun, also has a long list of crimes to his credit. He was allegedly involved in an attack in December 2007 on the top public security official in Playas de Rosarito, Jorge Eduardo Montero, in which a bodyguard was killed. He has also been connected to the killings of 12 police officers in that town and in the kidnapping of four people.

His brother Bartolo Jacome Gamboa, 18, was also arrested in Tijuana, as were eight police officers - including two who were until a few months ago bodyguards for Baja California Governor Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan.

"From these events we have decided to take measures to strengthen the security team around the governor and his family, and it is important to point out that this does not mean that his integrity or that of his family may have been at risk," said state government chief of staff Francisco Blake Mora. (dpa)