MEXICO CITY: Police in Mexico found the remains of a woman, with head and hands cut off, in a suitcase left in a metro rail station in the capital, security officials said Monday.

The macabre discovery took place late Sunday in a station in the center of Mexico City, they said.

Metro users had alerted station personnel to the suspicious suitcase at the bottom of a flight of stairs. A note allegedly from the notorious La Familia drug cartel, based in Michoacan state, was protruding from the bag.

Sources close to prosecutors told AFP a body had been found, without offering further details.

Local media said the remains belonged to a woman aged 25-30.

The kidnapping in May from a Mexico City bar of 13 young people whose bodies were found three months later in unmarked graves sparked a debate about the presence of drug cartels in the capital, which had been spared the violence plaguing other parts of the country.