Guadalajara, Mexico: Investigators have found 31 bodies hidden in clandestine graves outside Mexico’s second-largest city Guadalajara, authorities in violence-torn Jalisco state said Thursday.
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The work of uncovering the clandestine graves began earlier this month after authorities secured a 320 square meter plot of land in Tlajomulco, a suburb of Guadalajara.
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“At the end of the work on the property… 31 bodies were located in the area, corresponding to six women and 25 women,” the Jalisco prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
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Ten of the bodies were identified, nine of which corresponded to people who had been reported missing.
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Prosecutors and forensic officers excavated the graves with the help of heavy machinery, dogs and ground penetrating radar.
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Investigators have also identified two other nearby plots where they believe there could be more graves. Forensic experts will begin investigating those areas on Friday.
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Jalisco has seen violence linked to organized crime rebound in recent years due to the presence of the Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico’s most brutal drug cartels.
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Violence has spiked since March 2017 after an internal split in the cartel, which also competes with criminal groups in the neighboring Guanajuato state.
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In one suburb of Guadalajara, investigators discovered a property with 30 buried bodies in May.
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Another grave with 34 bodies was found in the same neighborhood in September.
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Some 3,200 military personnel have been deployed to Jalisco in an attempt to contain violence linked to organized crime.
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Mexican authorities have recorded nearly 50,000 cases of missing persons, the vast majority since 2006, when the government deployed the army to fight drug trafficking.
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More than 3,000 clandestine graves with more than 5,000 bodies have been discovered since 2006, according to official data. Many of the dead have not been identified.
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