MEXICO – Mexican marines found 72 dead bodies at a remote ranch near the US border, the Mexican navy said yesterday, the biggest single discovery of its kind in Mexico’s increasingly bloody drug war.
The marines came across the bodies of 58 men and 14 women on Tuesday at the ranch outside a town near the Gulf of Mexico in Tamaulipas state, some 150km from the Texas border, after a firefight with drug hitmen in which three gunmen and a marine died, a spokesman for the navy said.
One suspected trafficker was arrested, the navy said, and several escaped in SUVs.
“The bodies were dumped about the ranch and were not buried. We are still investigating how long they had been there,” the spokesman added. He declined to give more details.
Marines guarding a nearby checkpoint reached the ranch after a wounded man approached them and asked for help. The soldiers came under fire as they neared the ranch, the navy said.
After the firefight, marines seized assault rifles, bullets, uniforms and vehicles from the ranch – including one with forged army licence plates.
Mexican newspaper El Nortesaid the dead were undocumented South and Central American immigrants kidnapped by drug gangs on their way to the Texan border. The navy could not confirm the report.
Drug cartels have moved into human smuggling in recent years, kidnapping migrants, extorting them and forcing them to carry narcotics across the border.
The discovery in Tamaulipas is the largest single find in Mexico’s 3½-year assault on cartels, following the discovery of 55 bodies in western Guerrero state in May and 51 bodies on the outskirts of Monterrey near Texas in July.– (Reuters)