Mexico Zetas leader Miguel Angel Trevino captured

Trevino Morales took over the Zetas in October 2012

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Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, head of the brutal Zetas drug cartel, has been captured in northern Mexico, according to the Mexican government.

Trevino Morales, known as "Z-40", was captured outside Nuevo Laredo, near the US border at dawn on Monday.

He took control of the Zetas following the death of group founder Heriberto Lazcano in October 2012.

Correspondents say his capture is a triumph for authorities battling the powerful drug-trafficking cartels.

The Zetas were formed by defectors from a Mexican elite police unit and quickly became infamous for their brutality, which included the beheadings of kidnapped migrants and rival gang members.

The group split in 2010, sparking brutal turf wars in the north of the country.

Notorious

Trevino Morales was detained in countryside 27km (17 miles) south-west of Nuevo Laredo, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez told a news conference on Monday night.

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Analysis

Will GrantBBC News, Mexico City

The government of Enrique Pena Nieto has said that its strategy on the drug war would involve a shift away from high profile arrests towards a broader reduction of violence on Mexico's streets. For every drug cartel leader who is captured, the government has said, there is another to take his place.

But, nevertheless, they will be privately overjoyed at bringing down such an important drug lord as Miguel Angel Trevino Morales - especially without even having fired a shot.

A shockingly brutal man, he is accused of being behind some of the worst incidents in Mexico's recent violence including several events that shocked the nation.

Among them were the murder of 72 migrants in San Fernando in 2010 and a similar massacre a year later in which around 200 people were slaughtered.

Unlike other top members of the Zetas, Trevino did not come from the military. But he appeared to make up for his civilian background by specialising in a particularly sadistic form of violence against his victims.

Marines stopped a pick-up truck containing $2m (£1.3m) in cash and Trevino Morales was taken into custody along with a bodyguard, an accountant and eight guns, he said.

Mr Sanchez said marines had had the area under surveillance.

Unlike the military defectors in the cartel, "Z-40" was a civilian who worked his way up through the Zetas after they broke away from their original paymasters, the Gulf Cartel, and began running drug-trafficking operations themselves, says the BBC's Will Grant in Mexico City.

He is believed to be responsible for carrying out several notorious attacks involving particularly sadistic violence including the torture and murder of 72 Central American immigrants in San Fernando in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

He was also blamed for another atrocity a year later in which nearly 200 immigrants were massacred.

Before he became the group's overall leader, Trevino Morales co-ordinated the gang's important Nuevo Laredo drug corridor into the United States - the region in which he was finally apprehended.

This is undoubtedly the highest profile and successful drug lord capture to date for the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto, our correspondent says.

But as with most arrests of drug lords, there are often a number of possible successors to his throne.

The fear is that it will lead to a period of violent in-fighting between different Zeta factions as they try to assume control of the criminal organisation, our correspondent adds.