Fifty-six corpses were found in mass graves in northern Mexico, near the border with the United States, the prosecutor's office in charge of the investigation said on Saturday. The bodies were exhumed in the state of Chihuahua between Tuesday and Friday, with the support of the army, according to the press release from the regional prosecutor's office without any details on the possible identity of the victims. Criminal groups traffic drugs, weapons and migrants in this part of Mexico.
Over the days, investigators found bodies, complete skeletons and scattered bones, bullet casings and clothing. The remains were sent to forensic laboratories to determine “the causes and time of death, as well as the identity of the victims”added the prosecution. The prosecution undertakes to “bring legal security to the victims’ families”. The bodies were exhumed in a place known as «El Willy»controlled by the criminal group La Linea, “one of the armed branches” of the Ciudad Juárez cartel at the border, according to the newspaper La Jornada.
Chihuahua has been hit for years by violence linked to organized crime on a drug and migrant smuggling route to the United States. On December 26, at least 12 bodies were found in several graves about two hours from the border city of Ciudad Juárez. The state has a total of 3,927 missing people until December 2024, far from other states hardest hit by this phenomenon such as Jalisco (west) and Tamaulipas (north), which have more than 13,000 cases, according to official figures.
“In May 2022, Mexico reached the tragic figure of more than 100,000 people officially recognized as missing”according to the UN. Since December 2006, the date of the launch of a controversial anti-drug military operation, Mexico has accumulated more than 450,000 violent deaths and tens of thousands of disappearances, according to official figures.
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