Mexican authorities said they recovered a total of 31 bodies from pits in a southeastern state plagued by cartel violence since they began excavating the improvised graves at the weekend.
Chiapas State Governor Eduardo Ramirez at the weekend announced an operation to restore stability to Frailesca, an agricultural region near Guatemala where rival drug cartels have been involved in a turf war.
“As of today (Monday), we have found a total of 25 clandestine graves, 31 bodies found, 29 of them male and two female,” said Jorge Luis Llaven, the state prosecutor of Chiapas in a statement.
The Chiapas state government initially said it had discovered 15 bodies on Saturday. A further two were found on Sunday and 14 more on Monday.
The prosecutor said his office and the state security secretariat will continue investigating until they find “each one of the bodies of the people who have been reported missing”.
Mexico’s cartel-related violence is concentrated along drug trafficking routes, borders and ports of entry.
Chiapas state, on Mexico’s southern border, has been described by the InSight Crime think tank as “a major smuggling hub of both drugs and migrants”.
Violence has coincided with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel incursion into areas that were once strongholds of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s biggest drug trafficking organizations, it said.
Since Mexico launched its controversial anti-drug operation in 2006, it has recorded more than 450,000 murders and tens of thousands of people have gone missing, according to official figures.
