More than 5,000 people have gone missing in Mexico since 2006, the country’s National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) said on Saturday.
Authorities have also counted about 9,000 unidentified bodies of people who died during the same period, the office said.
The CNDH, an autonomous -government-funded organization, said 5,397 people had been “reported missing or absent.”
It cited official data on “8,898 people who died and have not been identified by authorities.”
Causes of death ranged from general violence to car crashes and health concerns, the CNDH said.
The report came after a preliminary UN study made public on Thursday stated that military forces fighting Mexico’s drug war may have played a role in the -disappearances of scores of people.
The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances said it would call for protocols on the use of force by the military and all police agencies.
It also urged the Mexican government to pull the army back from security operations after receiving reports of “several cases of forced disappearances” carried out by soldiers.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon gave Mexico’s armed forces a key role in anti-drug operations starting in December 2006.
Calderon has deployed about 50,000 troops as part of his war against the cartels. Drug-related violence is blamed for about 35,000 deaths since the campaign got underway over four years ago.
The report by the CNDH came on the same day authorities said that 20 people were killed in less than 24 hours in Mexico’s most violent city, Ciudad Juarez, which borders the US state of Texas.
The first of three separate attacks by armed groups was late on Thursday when five people were killed at a bar called La Barritas.
Witnesses described several armed men opening fire from outside the building, before Molotov cocktails were thrown inside, according to local press reports.
The victims were two men, two women and a fifth person “burned so badly that it was impossible to determine the sex,” a forensics expert said on condition of anonymity.
Ten people were killed late on Thursday into Friday at another bar, El Castillo, near the border crossing with the US, officials in the state of Chihuahua said.
Witnesses said more than a dozen gunmen dressed in black entered the bar and opened fire. The bar is located near the Zaragoza International Bridge linking Ciudad Juarez to the city of El Paso in Texas.
Separately on Friday, gunmen fired at a food stand on the street, killing four men and a 10-year-old boy, a police officer said.
Ciudad Juarez is considered the most violent city in Mexico, with more than 3,100 homicides last year. Most of the violence is blamed on drug cartels, who fight for control of lucrative drug routes into the US.
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