CHICAGO: An illegal lab in Mexico produced some of the powerful painkillers that killed dozens of people in Chicago last year who ingested with heroin, according to newly unsealed indictments.

Two drug conspiracy indictments unsealed on Thursday name 13 people in Mexico and seven members of Chicago's Mickey Cobras street gang.

Gang members were accused of getting the painkiller, fentanyl, mixing it with heroin and selling the combination in city public housing complexes, killing at least five people. Nationwide, hundreds have died from heroin laced with fentanyl since 2005. In Cook County, officials attributed more than 200 deaths to fentanyl-laced heroin.

The new charges mark the first time law enforcement has been able to link the Mexican laboratory in Toluca to drug sales in Chicago. Last year, federal prosecutors in Chicago charged 47 gang members and associates with selling heroin and the painkiller fentanyl in public housing.—AP