A: mass grave Mexican authorities said on Sunday that dozens of bags of dismembered body parts containing the remains of 24 people were found in a suburb of Guadalajara last December.

Six of them – one woman and five men – have been identified. They went missing between 2021 and 2023, according to the Jalisco state prosecutor's office. statement.

“The families of those victims have already been notified, and they are being provided with full psychosocial support by the Deputy Prosecutor's Office for Missing Persons,” said the state prosecutor.

The identities of the remaining 18 have not yet been confirmed and a search is underway for the culprits.

Officials said the grave was located by drones with thermal imaging cameras and ground-penetrating radar, as well as dog teams.

More than 450,000 people have been killed across the country since Mexico launched a major crackdown on drug cartels in 2006.

The deaths, along with the disappearances of tens of thousands of others, are largely blamed on organized crime.Some of the recent violence has coincided Jalisco New Generation Cartel incursion into areas that were once strongholds Sinaloa cartelOne of the largest drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.

Jalisco is the Mexican state with the most missing persons, with 15,382 at the end of last year, according to authorities.

Collectives searching for missing persons drug cartels and other organized crime groups are said to sometimes use ovens to burn their victims without leaving a trace.

The country's forensic system is overwhelmed, and tens of thousands of unidentified bodies lie in morgues or mass graves.

Mexican authorities announced last month that they had largely recovered 31 bodies From the pits of Chiapas, a state plagued by cartel violence.

Just days before that, Mexican authorities discovered 12 bodies buried in secret graves in the northern state of Chihuahua.