Mexico City, Sep 6 (IANS/EFE): The suspected leader of the Gulf drug cartel in the cities of Cancun and Playa del Carmen has been arrested by police and Mexican army troops.

Jose Roberto Diaz Cornelio was captured Wednesday in Merida and taken to Cancun, Quintana Roo Attorney General Gaspar Armando Garcia said Thursday.

Diaz Cornelio was moved early Thursday to the municipal jail in Playa del Carmen, where he will be tried on murder and extortion charges.

Officers from the police department in Merida, the capital of Yucatan state, and soldiers participated in the operation to arrest Diaz Cornelio.

The suspected Gulf cartel boss is being investigated in connection with the murders of Jose Salvador Delgado Estrada and Marlin bar DJ Jose Israel Lopez Morales, whose bodies were found in Xcalacoco, an area in the Riviera Maya.

"He was also being investigated for running extortion rackets targeting discos, bars and stores", and for extortion "that harmed a businessman... linked to a tax inspector in the city of Solidaridad", the attorney general said.

The gang led by Diaz Cornelio attacked the businessman's house with a fire bomb, Garcia said.

"Roberto Diaz Cornelio acknowledged that he handed over $9,000 monthly to his immediate boss, Miguel Angel Villalobos," who ran the Gulf cartel's business in the northern zone, Garcia added.

Villalobos ordered the killing of Cancun police sector commander Gumersindo Martinez Gomez last month, Diaz Cornelio told investigators.

The Gulf cartel is no longer as powerful as it was in the past, partly because of its break with Los Zetas, the criminal organisation's former armed wing, which severed ties with the cartel in 2010 and now runs its own narcotics trafficking business.

The cartel, one of Mexico's oldest drug trafficking organisations, was founded by Juan Nepomuceno Guerra in the 1970s and was later led by Juan Garcia Abrego, who was arrested in 1996 and extradited to the US.