Shocking photographs have emerged showing tourists having to drive around the dismembered bodies of cartel victims in Acapulco.

Drug violence in the Mexican city has soared in recent years, and the barbaric executions are now beginning to spill into the visitors' quarters.

Yesterday, a car of tourists was seen passing burned corpses and severed limbs which had been left strewn on the Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard - one of the main carriageways running through the heart of the city.

The car full of tourists, seen with luggage on the SUV's roof, passes the burned corpses and severed limbs (bottom left, muzzed) on one of the main trunk roads through Acapulco

Forensic workers remove the body of a taxi driver gunned down by unknown assailants in Acapulco, Mexico on March 23, 2018

Another body is cleared from the street in the ongoing war on drugs in the state of Guerrero.

In spite of its popularity with visitors, with it being a favorite

the beach resort in the state of Guerrero has a sinister drug scene which is is beginning to come to the surface.

Last year, more than 25,000 people were murdered in Mexico, setting a new record.

Guerrero had the most of any state - 2,318.

Mexico's federal government sent the military into the streets to combat drug cartels in 2006 and has been fighting a bloody war with them ever since.

Guerrero state is home to popular beach resorts such as Acapulco, Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo, but is also among Mexico's poorest states and is hard-hit by organized crime.

The crimes committed by the notorious cartels in the state are now more public than ever.

On Valentine's Day, the gory crime scene of the day was a severed head left on the sidewalk in a gift box with a balloon tied to it.

At the beginning of the month, a police commander was kidnapped in Acapulco and then shot to death.

Hector Moreno, of the Morelos state police command, was abducted when off duty by criminals in a poor area of the city and later shot to death, according to a member of the command's staff.

Forensic workers stand above the bodies of two women who were gunned down on March 25

Another crime scene in Acapulco, Guerrero state. Last year, more than 25,000 people were murdered in Mexico, setting a new record. Guerrero had the most of any state - 2,318

A bullet is seen at a crime scene were two women were gunned down three days ago in Acapulco

Last week, Mexican Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete there are 'warning signs' that drug cartels are trying to influence the country's upcoming elections.

Mexico will elect a new president, Congress and a host of local and state officials on July 1, a vulnerable moment for a country where multi-billion-dollar drug cartels wield huge power.

Navarrette said: 'There are warning signs and alarm bells in some regions of the country.

He mentioned the town of Chilapa, in the violent southern state of Guerrero, where two candidates for a seat in the state legislature were murdered last month.

'There have been reckless attempts to pressure candidates... to align themselves with a particular criminal group,' Navarrete said.

'We're not going to let this happen.'

But Mexico is historically a dangerous place for politicians.

According to the National Mayors' Association, more than 100 mayors, ex-mayors or mayors-elect have been murdered by criminal gangs since 2006, the year the government declared war on drug cartels.

Candidates are often in the line of fire as well.

The latest killing came two weeks ago, when a mayoral candidate in the central state of Puebla named Gustavo Martin Gomez Alvarez was shot 11 times by gunmen in the town of Francisco Z Mena.

The shooting happened hours after the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, warned that political violence has reached 'absolutely unacceptable' levels in Mexico ahead of the July polls.