Mexico City Mexican authorities have found 12 bodies buried in secret graves in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, officials said Thursday.
The state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that authorities found 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in the municipality of Ascension, near the US border.
She added, “The discovery was made during tracking operations that took place on December 18, 19, and 20.”
She added that “the skeletons and unidentified evidence were transferred to the laboratories of the Forensic Service” in the city of Ciudad Juarez for identification and to determine possible causes of death.
Drug gangs And kidnapping gangs In Mexico The Associated Press reports that these companies often use secret burial grounds to dispose of the bodies of their victims or competitors. This has contributed to Mexico’s massive missing persons problem – about 120,000 people at this time.
Relatives of most missing persons are left to search on their own, often forming volunteer groups that venture out into the desert in search of secret graves. It was not clear whether any volunteer groups helped find the graves in Ascension.
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For years, Chihuahua has witnessed violence linked to organized crime as a means of drug smuggling and smuggling immigrants to the United States.
It has recorded 3,927 missing persons since 1952, according to official figures. Jalisco and Tamaulipas, the two states most affected by the violence, recorded more than 13,000 people missing in the same period.
Mexico witnessed the death of more than 450,000 people Drug-related violence Since the government deployed the army to combat human trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.
