Remains of 26 victims found in clandestine graves in northern Mexico

Cajeme (Mexico), 14 Mar The remains of 26 victims of criminal groups, buried in clandestine graves, were found by relatives of missing persons and activists this weekend in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, official sources confirmed on Monday. The Attorney General's Office in Sonora indicated that during the weekend, with some collectives, including Guerreras Buscadores, they searched several neighborhoods in Ciudad Obregon and found remains in the yards of abandoned houses. “In total, 17 bodies were recovered, as well as bone remains, with an average time of death ranging from six months to one year. All will be subjected to scientific tests to determine the identity of each of the deceased persons,” the Attorney General's Office said in a statement. Also during the weekend, the Buscando en San Luis Río Colorado collective, made up of women and accompanied by the authorities, managed to rescue the remains of nine victims of organized crime from five graves in the municipal garbage dump. “It was on the outskirts, south of the municipal garbage dump of San Luis Rio Colorado, that they found five graves that are being processed, and that as of March 12, nine bodies have been recovered, all of them belonging to males,” the State Prosecutor's Office reported. The bodies and evidence found at the site are being processed by expert services personnel of the State Attorney's Office, who found bullet casings in the area and detected that the bodies are tied hand and foot, some of them practically naked. In searches carried out during the month of February at the San Luis Colorado border, collectives and authorities found another 10 graves with about 20 bodies, most of them male. Mexico is experiencing a missing persons crisis with more than 98,500 Mexicans not located from 1964 to date, as recognized by the National Search Commission (CNB) of the Ministry of the Interior (Segob).