Mexico City – Mexican authorities have discovered 12 bodies buried in secret graves in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, officials said Thursday.
Authorities discovered 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in Ascension Parish near the U.S. border, prosecutors said in a statement.
“The discovery was made during tracking operations that took place on December 18, 19 and 20,” it said.
“The unidentified skeletons and evidence were transferred to the laboratories of the Forensic Medical Service” of the city of Ciudad Juárez for possible identification and to determine possible causes of death, it said.
Drug cartels and kidnapping gangs in Mexico often use such secret body dumps to get rid of the bodies of their victims or rivals. The grisly practice has contributed to Mexico’s enormous problem of missing people, of which there are now around 120,000.
The relatives of most missing people are largely left to their own devices to search for their loved ones, and they often form volunteer search parties that go into the desert to look for secret graves. It was not known whether any of these volunteer groups had helped authorities find the graves in Ascencion.
Google Maps
Chihuahua has been plagued for years by violence linked to organized crime, which serves as a route for drug trafficking and migrant smuggling to the United States.
According to official figures, 3,927 missing people have been registered since 1952. Jalisco and Tamaulipas, the states most affected by violence, each recorded more than 13,000 missing people during the same period.
According to official figures, more than 450,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since the army deployed to combat drug trafficking in 2006.
