At least 17 bodies were found Sunday on the Guadalajara-Morelia highway in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, state prosecutors said.

Police in Tizapan el Alto, a city near the border with Michoacan state, found the bodies of the men, who had been bound with ropes and chains, and shot, near the highway, the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office said.

The men may have been murdered in Michoacan and dumped in Jalisco by members of an unidentifed criminal organization, the AG’s office said.