SANIAG, Maguindanao - Screams of anguish pierced the farming village of Saniag Tuesday as police pulled bodies from a mass grave, unearthing one of the most brutal political killings in Philippine history.
A woman identified by police as the widow of local freelance journalist Napoleon Salaysay stepped up, tears welling on her eyes and gasping, to claim a cadaver whose neck had been nearly severed by a hack wound.
The dead man's face was shattered beyond recognition with bullet wounds, and the woman identified him by the contents of his wallet.
Two other men, both unidentified, had both hands tied in front of them, while a mortician's aide told AFP one unidentified woman victim appeared to be pregnant. Police could not immediately confirm this.
Dozens of other people stood among the lush green farmland in remote Saniag village staring at the mounds of freshly dug dirt, as a pair of mechanical diggers clawed at the reddish clay on a hillside in search of more bodies.
The victims had been dumped in the hastily dug graves on Monday, shortly after gunmen allegedly linked to a local political chief shot dead at least 46 of them from close range with what police said were M-16 assault rifles.
The victims from a small party of mostly female opposition politicians and a large group of accompanying journalists who were abducted on Monday morning as they embarked on a trip to an electoral office.
The opposition politicians and their lawyers were intending to register a senior member of their clan to run as governor of Maguindanao province in next year's national elections.
Several hours after the abduction, the military found the victims' six-vehicle convoy just off the lonely unpaved road of Saniag along with 22 bodies that had been dumped close by.
A mechanical digger that authorities suspected may have been used to prepare the mass graves was also still there.
It had the name "Andal Ampatuan Sr." painted on it. Ampatuan is the current governor of Maguindanao province who authorities say is suspected of organizing the massacre.
On Tuesday, with the nation already in shock at the magnitude of the massacre, investigators found two mass graves within 20 meters (66 feet) of each other, with 17 bodies in just one of them.
"They were piled on top of each other. It looked as if they were buried hurriedly," said the regional police commander, Chief Superintendent Josefino Cataluna.
Altogether, 24 bodies were recovered on Tuesday, bringing the confirmed death toll to 46.
An AFP journalist on the scene said the corpses were found under around seven meters (23 feet) of dirt, and were already starting to smell in the tropical heat.
Police said that some of the female victims had their lower garments unzipped and that investigations were being carried to determine if anyone had been raped before being killed.
Local press organizations said the dead included at least 12 journalists, making Monday's shootings the world's single deadliest attack on the press in modern history.
The New York-based press monitor Committee to Protect Journalists said the worst attack previously on record occurred in October, 2006, when 11 employees of Al-Shaabiya television were killed at the station's Baghdad studios in Iraq.
