Mass grave unearthed in midst of Mexico's drug war
The remains of 33 people are found in a shallow grave on an abandoned property in the border town of Ciudad Juarez.
MEXICO CITY — Authorities in Ciudad Juarez said Friday that they had uncovered the remains of 33 people buried in the yard of an abandoned property, a mass grave believed to be linked to the city's violent drug trade.
The grisly discovery surfaced as part of a recent government crackdown on narcotics traffickers in this city across the border from El Paso that has been gripped by a spasm of drug-related killing unseen in years. Authorities said the Juarez drug cartel might be involved in the deaths.
The same area attracted worldwide attention for the violent deaths of hundreds of women and girls beginning in the early 1990s. Many of the cases remain unsolved.
Acting on an anonymous tip, federal police on March 1 began excavating a weedy lot hidden behind a cinder-block wall in a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side. Day one yielded six corpses. It took law enforcement nearly two weeks to uncover the other remains, working with sniffer dogs, shovels and a backhoe.
All but three of the victims were men. Some were dismembered. Forensics experts said some of the corpses may have been buried for as long as five years. Police confirmed the body count Friday.
The discovery stunned neighbors in the normally tranquil La Cuesta neighborhood.
"We never imagined we were living across from a tomb," said one neighbor, who like others interviewed declined to be named for fear of reprisal.
It's the second such find in less than a month. Federal authorities unearthed nine bodies buried in the yard of a Ciudad Juarez home in late February after a drug bust.
Security experts say the discovery of old graves is a result of recent government efforts to strike hard at Mexico's drug cartels. Military and federal police have been deployed to Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and other trafficking hot spots across the country, a strategy that has resulted in some major drug and weapons seizures as well as some high-profile arrests.
This week, Gustavo Rivera Martinez, an alleged leader of the Arellano Felix cartel, was nabbed in Cabo San Lucas by federal agents. Mario Montemayor Covarrubias, identified by Mexican news media as a key leader of a kidnapping cell of the cartel, was arrested in Tijuana earlier this month after a seven-hour shootout with authorities.
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