Eleven mutilated corpses, many of them decapitated, were found dumped by the roadside in southwest Mexico on Thursday in the same state where 43 trainee teachers were abducted and apparently massacred two months ago, local authorities said.

The grisly discovery came just hours before embattled President Enrique Peña Nieto was set to announce a series of measures to improve law and order in a land grappling with daily drug gang violence.

Some of the naked torsos of the corpses were burnt, photographs published by local media showed.

The attorney general’s office in the restive Guerrero state said the bodies were found in Chilapa, a municipality in the same region as the radical leftist college attended by the abducted students.

Peña Nieto took office two years ago vowing to restore order in Mexico, where about 100,000 people have died in violence linked to organized crime since 2007.

But the shocking case of the trainee teachers has disrupted his efforts to focus public attention away from violence and onto a raft of economic reforms he has pushed through Congress.

Peña Nieto has been under pressure from mass protests to end impunity and rampant brutality by security forces since the 43 students were abducted by police working with a local drug gang in the southwestern city of Iguala on the night of 26 September.