Mexican authorities said they had pulled a total of 31 bodies from pits in a southeastern state plagued by cartel violence since they began digging up makeshift graves over the weekend.
The governor of Chiapas state, Eduardo Ramírez, announced over the weekend an operation to restore stability in Frailesco, an agricultural region near Guatemala where rival drug cartels are engaged in a turf war.
“As of today (Monday), we have found a total of 25 underground graves, 31 bodies, 29 of them men and two women,” Chiapas state prosecutor Jorge Luis Loven said in a statement.
The Chiapas state government initially said yes found 15 bodies on Saturday. Two more were found on Sunday and another 14 on Monday. Governor Ramirez released images of the scene over the weekend social networks.
The prosecutor said his office and the state security secretariat would continue to investigate until they found “every body of the people who are considered missing.”
Teams to search for missing persons drug cartels and other organized crime groups are said to sometimes use ovens to burn their victims without leaving a trace.
Mexico's cartel-related violence is concentrated along drug-trafficking routes, borders, and points of entry.
The InSight Crime Research Center called the state of Chiapas on Mexico's southern border “a major hub for both drug and migrant smuggling.”
In October, the famous Catholic priest Marcelo Perez was shot and killed in Chiapas. Peres received frequent threats, and human rights activists said he did not receive the necessary state protection.
Violence coincided with Jalisco's new generation cartel incursions into areas that were once strongholds c The Sinaloa Cartelone of Mexico's largest drug-trafficking organizations, the report said.
More than 450,000 murders and tens of thousands of people have gone missing since Mexico's controversial anti-drug operation began in 2006, according to official figures.
Last week, Mexican authorities discovered 12 bodies buried in underground graves in the northern state of Chihuahua. Authorities discovered 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in Ascension County near the U.S. border, the state attorney's office said in a statement.