NUEVO LAREDO—The number of bodies found dumped in mass graves in northeastern Mexico has risen to 72, after thirteen more corpses were uncovered by authorities, officials said Friday.
Morelos Jaime Canseco, a senior official in the Tamaulipas state government, told AFP that the graves were found late 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.
All the victims were men, all were Mexican, and all had been killed recently, said Canseco.
The first discovery was made by a military patrol in San Fernando, which is 160 kilometers (99 miles) 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 gave the 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 prosecutor’s office in a statement said 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 2010, 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 and that security on the roads was to be boosted.
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.
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.