By IANS/EFE,
Mexico City : A total of 121 bodies have been recovered from the mass graves in the northern Mexican state of Durango, with the latest digs turning up 11 sets of human remains, prosecutors said.
The bodies of 10 men and a woman were discovered in Durango city’s Vicente Suarez neighbourhood, where other bodies were found earlier this week, the Durango state Attorney General’s Office said.
Three mass graves have been found since early last month, but officials have not identified the victims or revealed a motive for the killings.
The graves were found April 4 at two sites in Durango city.
The Sinaloa cartel, Mexico’s oldest and largest drug trafficking organization, has been trying to gain control of Durango, the press reported.
Durango, one of the states most affected by drug-related violence, is reported to be the hiding place of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman.
The bodies of 183 people were found last month in San Fernando, a city in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.
The bodies found in the mass graves are believed to be those of people who were kidnapped by the Zetas drug cartel while traveling through San Fernando on buses and were later murdered.
The mass graves were found in the wake of reports that gunmen had forced men off buses headed for Reynosa, located across the border from McAllen, Texas, between March 19 and March 31.
Some gangs have resorted to using unusual methods to recruit gunmen because of the high casualties in the war being waged by rival drug traffickers for control of territory, the federal government says.
The incidents involving the buses may have been an attempt to recruit gunmen, investigators said.
A total of 15,270 people died in drug-related violence in Mexico last year, and more than 36,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country’s cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006.