A a large grave was found last December in a suburb of Guadalajara with dozens of bags of loose body parts containing the remains of 24 people, Mexican authorities said Sunday.
Six of them – a woman and five men – were identified. They were reported missing between 2021 and 2023, the Jalisco state prosecutor's office said in a statement. report.
“The families of these victims have already been notified and are receiving full psychiatric support from the Office of the Assistant Prosecutor for Missing Persons,” the state prosecutor said.
The other 18 have yet to be positively identified, and investigations are ongoing for those who are guilty.
Officials said the grave was found using drones with thermal cameras and ground-penetrating radars as well as dog teams.
More than 450,000 people have been murdered across the country since Mexico launched a major offensive against drug cartels in 2006.
The deaths, as well as the tens of thousands more who have disappeared, are largely blamed on organized crime. Some of the recent violence has coincided with the Jalisco's new generation quarter into areas that were once strongholds of the The Sinaloa Quarterone of the largest drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.
Jalisco is the Mexican state with the largest number of missing people – 15,382 by the end of last year, according to the authorities.
Gatherings looking for missing people say that drug cartels and other organized crime groups sometimes use ovens to burn their victims without leaving a trace.
The country's forensic system is overwhelmed, and tens of thousands of unknown bodies lie unclaimed in morgues or mass graves.
Just last month, Mexican authorities said they had recovered in full 31 bodies from pits in Chiapas, a state plagued by cartel violence.
Chiapas State Governor Eduardo Ramirez
Just days before that, Mexican authorities found 12 bodies buried in hidden graves in the northern state of Chihuahua.
