Mexican police said on Tuesday they found 11 bodies at the home of a suspected leading drug trafficker in a violent city on the US border and were searching for more victims.
The attorney general's office said police dug up four bodies at the rear of a house in Ciudad Juarez over the weekend and found seven more on Monday.
Mexico has been rocked in recent weeks by a wave of drug-related violence, with at least 18 people gunned down in the past week in gangland-style hits.
Police sources said the victims in the house were men and that at least some of them had been beaten, tortured and then suffocated. Investigators believe the victims were involved in the drug trade and may have been killed as part of a turf war between rival traffickers.
"From our latest information, some of them [the bodies] have been there between six months and one year," said Mexico's Attorney General, Rafael Macedo.
Two or three of the corpses have been identified by family members, he said. No one has been arrested in connection with the killings but one witness is under protection.
The corpses were buried in makeshift graves under the back patio of a two-story home in a middle-class residential area.
Mexican police say the home served as a safe house for Humberto Santillan, a suspected trafficker arrested 12 days ago in El Paso, Texas, on charges of conspiring with at least three others to import cocaine for trafficking.
US authorities named the man as Heriberto Santillan. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua state is home to the notorious Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel and drug killings are common.
In a separate development, Mexico's Defense Ministry said late on Tuesday it had arrested Javier Torres Felix, indicted by the US Attorney General last year.
Torres, alias "JT," has been linked to several murders in Sinaloa over the past two months and is responsible for much of the marijuana trade in the state of Sinaloa, the Defense Ministry said.
US authorities said Torres, allegedly a top lieutenant of Mexican drug lord Ismael Zambada-Garcia, was responsible for organizing multi-ton shipments of cocaine to the US.
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