Mexico City, Sep 19 (IANS) Nineteen bags of human remains have been found near a well in Mexico's Jalisco state where 44 bodies were discovered earlier this month, authorities said.
Experts from the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences removed the bags from the well after resuming a search of the property located in the municipality of Zapopan, Efe news quoted a statement by the state attorney general's office as saying.
On September 3, authorities uncovered the well more than 33 feet deep on the land, from which they extracted 119 bags of human remains belonging to at least 44 people, out of which 29 have been identified; 13 bodies have been found whole and 16 in parts. Two of the victims were women and the rest men.
"In the work carried out this day by the staff of the prosecutor's office specializing in missing persons on the site of La Primavera, a hole was located, inside which lay plastic bags, apparently with various evidence such as human remains and clothing," the institution said.
The 19 bags were sent to the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences, where their contents will be determined, the attorney general's office said.
A total of 138 bags with human remains have now been found on this four-hectare property, located in the forest of La Primavera.
Experts worked for eight days to extract the 119 bags before ending the search. The new grave is located about 300 meters from that well.
The attorney general's office said that trained dogs were used in the search and the staff did "a quadrant sweep, in addition to using geo-radar equipment to determine if there are more human remains at the site".
The experts suspended the search owing to rain and planned to resume it on Thursday.
So far this year, 27 mass graves have been found in Jalisco with 123 bodies, of which only some have been identified.
Jalisco is one of the areas where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel led by Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera Cervantes is most active.
The CJNG is considered the largest criminal group in the country ahead of the Sinaloa cartel, according to the Mexican authorities.
--IANS
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