5,000 bodies found in unmarked graves in Mexico since 2006

Police and forensic personnel holding white bags for corpses stand by an unmarked grave in 2014 in Guerrero state, Mexico -- a country that has suffered a wave of violence since launching the so-called "drug war"

Police and forensic personnel stand by an unmarked grave in Guerrero state

MEXICO CITY, Aug 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nearly 5,000 bodies have been found in more than 3,000 unmarked graves since Mexico deployed the army to fight drug trafficking in 2006, the government said in its first comprehensive report on the carnage.

Mexico has been hit by a wave of violence since launching the so-called “drug war,” and activists and family members of the country’s 40,000 missing persons have been denouncing mass graves for years.

But the report is the first time the authorities have done a nationwide survey to establish how many there are, and how many victims are buried in them.

It found 3,024 unmarked graves nationwide, with at least 4,974 bodies, Karla Quintana, head of the national search commission for missing persons, told a news conference alongside President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on International Day of the Disappeared.

“This is the first time the federal government has recognized the number of unmarked graves,” she said.

“This is not about numbers, though. These are people who are missing and whose loved ones are searching for them.”

Authorities believe most of the victims were murdered by criminal gangs, sometimes in collusion with corrupt local officials, said Alejandro Encinas, deputy minister for human rights.

Families of the missing meanwhile protested outside the presidential palace, where the news conference was held, calling on the government to do more to find their relatives.

Carrying large pictures of their missing family members, they chanted: “Where are our children?”

Lopez Obrador, an anti-establishment leftist, has vowed to stop the spiral of violence and do more to find the missing, including by stepping up efforts to identify the 26,000 unidentified bodies in the country’s overflowing morgues.

However, violent crime rates have so far increased under his administration. — NNN-AGENCIES

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