The number of bodies found dumped in mass graves in northeastern Mexico has risen to 72, after 13 more corpses were uncovered by authorities, officials said on Friday.
Morelos Jaime Canseco, a senior official in the Tamaulipas state government, said that the graves were found late on Thursday after a clash between soldiers and gunmen.
“In one grave nine bodies were found, and in the other four,” Canseco said.
Earlier this week 59 bodies were discovered in eight mass graves on a ranch in the farming village of La Joya, in northeast Tamaulipas state.
The two new grave sites were further away from the previous eight, outside of the village, but also in the San Fernando municipality, and could have been the result of separate killings, Canseco said.
The first discovery was made by a military patrol in San -Fernando, which is 160km from the US border state of Texas.
It came after a tip-off in late March about the disappearance or abduction of several bus passengers in the area.
In the military sweep ordered after the buses were stopped, soldiers rescued five abduction victims who provided key information. Authorities are closely guarding the victims, Canseco said.
While the violent Zetas drug cartel — led by former elite Mexican commandos — is widely known to be active in the region, authorities have refused to say who may be responsible for the slaughter.
The prosecutors’ office said in a statement that it was “trying to establish if the remains are those of the people who went missing on the buses.”
San Fernando, which has about 58,000 residents, is where 72 migrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador and Brazil were found dead in August last year, killed for refusing to work for drug traffickers.
The corpses were transported to the city of Matamoros in refrigerated containers under police and military escort where experts are working to identify the remains.
A national security council spokesman, Alejandro Poire, said 14 arrests had been made in the case of the bus abductions.
Tamaulipas State was also the scene of fierce battles between warring drug cartels of the Gulf, and its former allies, the Zetas, a violent gang which is led by former soldiers and deserters from the Mexican army.
Seven major drug gangs are operating in Mexico and their bloody clashes with each other and the authorities have left over 34,600 people dead since December 2006.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown against the drug gangs in 2006 but has so far failed to stem the violence.
More than 3,000 people have been killed this year alone, according to figures cited by the Mexican media.
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