The remains of at least 25 people have been discovered in an underground pit near Guadalajara, in western Mexico, the Jalisco state attorney's office said on Sunday. The searches carried out in the grave located on Thursday made it possible "to extract the remains of 25 unidentified people as well as five bags in which we presume that there could be other human remains," the institution said.
Neighbors said a dog had found bones inside an abandoned farm in a poor neighborhood in the municipality of El Salto, south of Guadalajara, the country's second largest city. With the help of firefighters and a specialized canine team, exploration work started on Thursday and "will continue in the next few days until the investigators exclude the presence of new evidence on the farm," a said the prosecutor's office.
Some 3,000 assassinations in March
Some 115 bodies in at least 10 clandestine graves have been discovered since the beginning of the year in the state of Jalisco, most of them having been discovered in the outskirts of Guadalajara. This western state has experienced increasing violence for more than five years due to the presence of the powerful drug cartel, Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).
For the past three years, violence has increased, according to the authorities, due to a fracture within this cartel and rivalries with other gangs in the neighboring state of Guanajuato in the trafficking of stolen fuel. The coronavirus pandemic has not interrupted the cycle of violence in the country: 3,000 assassinations and 78 feminicides were recorded in March according to official statistics.
It is the heaviest monthly assessment since the arrival of power from the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, elected in 2018. In addition, more than 60,000 people are missing, the majority of them since the launch in late 2016 d '' a military strategy to combat organized crime.
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