Mexico Asks For Help to ID 72 Bodies
 UPI
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August 26, 2010
| | This image released by Mexico's Navy shows, shows the alleged site where 72 bodies, not seen, were found in San Fernando, eastern Mexico, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010. (AP/Mexico's Secretary Navy) | |
Mexico City - Mexican investigators have asked diplomats from several Latin American countries to help identify the 72 bodies found this week at a ranch in northeast Mexico.
The nationalities of the deceased men and women - presumed to be migrant workers - haven't been confirmed and Mexico reached out to officials from El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Brazil for help, CNN reported Thursday.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in a statement he "strongly condemns the acts that caused the deaths of 72 people" and said drug cartels were turning to extortion and kidnapping of migrants as resources and recruits fell off.
"This is a result of the activity of the state against them, which has significantly weakened the operational capacity of criminal groups," Calderon's office said.
The bodies of the 58 men and 14 women were found Wednesday unburied in a building on a ranch near San Fernando, close to Mexico's border with Texas. The Mexican navy, called in to investigate, said it learned of the site after a man with a gunshot wound approached a military roadblock, saying he was injured by a criminal gang, CNN said.
Human rights organizations said in a joint statement the massacre of migrants wasn't an isolated event, criticizing the Mexican government and demanded better cooperation among all levels of government to end the problem, El Universal reported.
"The situation is scandalous," said Alberto Herrera, executive director of Amnesty International in Mexico. "(Migrants) face all sorts of abuses, abductions, threats, sexual violence and murder."
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