Mexico, April 28: The number of bodies discovered in a series of mass graves in northern Mexico this month has reached 279 and officials expect the number to continue rising.
“The excavations will continue today and they will probably find more bodies,” an official from the Mexican state of Durango was quoted by Reuters as saying on Wednesday.
So far, a total of 183 murdered victims have been unearthed in the state of Tamaulipas while 96 older corpses had been uncovered in two separate finds in the neighboring state of Durango.
The Mexican government has blamed the Zetas cartel for the deaths and has arrested 74 suspects, including 17 police officers, in connection with the murders.
The bodies are believed to belong to migrant workers who had refused to cooperate with the gangs.
The cartels kidnap migrant workers across Mexico on a regular basis and force them to cooperate in drug trafficking or hold them for extortion money.
The spike in drug-related violence comes despite a crackdown launched by President Felipe Calderon against drug cartels in 2006.
The number of people killed in Mexico since the beginning of the crackdown is estimated to have passed 36,000 by May 2011.
———Agencies