Nine More Bodies Found in Clandestine Graves in Monterrey

State Attorney General’s Office investigators have located another nine bodies in three clandestine graves outside this northern Mexican metropolis, bringing the total number of corpses discovered to 15, the Nuevo Leon state Security Council said.

“The find was made (Tuesday) in the city of Benito Juarez,” located in the northern part of the Monterrey metropolitan area, a state Security Council official told Efe.

Authorities thus far have confirmed the discovery of two complete decomposing corpses and the remains of another 13 people in the three graves located on a local road in Santa Ana, a community in Benito Juarez.

The bodies of 51 people suspected of having been involved in drug trafficking were found in Benito Juarez in June 2010.

A total of 324 murders were registered in Nuevo Leon in the first two months of this year, a record for a two-month period in the state, officials said.

The wave of drug-related violence in Nuevo Leon claimed the lives of 2,003 people in 2011, official figures show.

Monterrey, which is home to many of Mexico’s industrial giants, had long seemed immune to the drug war but since early 2010 has been the scene of a brutal turf struggle pitting the Gulf cartel against former allies Los Zetas, which are battling for control of smuggling routes into the United States.

About 200 disappearances in Nuevo Leon state in the past three years may be linked to the cartel turf war, non-governmental organizations say.

Among those missing are 38 Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, workers from the refinery in Cadereyta, a city next to Benito Juarez.

Mexico’s drug war death toll stood at 47,515 from December 2006 to Sept. 30, 2011.

The murder total has grown every year of President Felipe Calderon’s military offensive against the well-funded, heavily armed drug cartels.

Unofficial tallies published in December by independent daily La Jornada put the death toll from Mexico’s drug war at more than 50,000.

Source: EFE