MEXICO CITY, April 17 (Reuters) - Mexican police have arrested the local head of the notorious Gulf Cartel drug gang in a city on the U.S. border as part of President Felipe Calderon's nationwide crackdown on organized crime.

Juan Oscar Garza was the cartel's leader in the city of Reynosa, just south of McAllen, Texas and was sought in Mexico for smuggling drugs, guns and people across the border, the attorney-general's office said on Tuesday.

He was arrested at a nightclub in Reynosa along with his brother, sister and girlfriend. Officials declined to say when the arrest took place.

The Gulf Cartel is one of the country's two most powerful trafficking gangs and is locked in a bitter fight with rival smugglers from the Pacific coast.

Its leader Osiel Cardenas was extradited to the United States in January.

Calderon has ordered thousands of soldiers into states throughout the country to try to end a war between the two drug gangs which killed around 2,000 people last year.

But narcotics-related murders have continued unabated. More than 20 bodies were found throughout Mexico on Monday alone, including five corpses with bound hands and feet discovered stuffed into a sports utility vehicle in the beach resort city of Cancun.

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