Acting on a tip-off by an anonymous person, Police in the Mexican northern state of Nuevo Leon have uncovered a mass grave with at least 38 bodies. They also found blood on a ramp with traces of petrol at the bottom, a sign that the site might have been the best spot for drug gangs to torture and possibly kill their victims before burial.
The site itself is said to be almost the size of a football pitch. In the past weeks, two more such graves have been discovered in the same state of Nuevo Leon, an epicenter for violence between various rival drug gangs.
The bodies were found in a pit, east of the city of Monterrey, measuring 70 metres by 40 metres.
They were too badly decomposed for immediate identification.
Crime scene investigators are using diggers to search for more bodies, and Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garzay Garza said officials still had to inspect three more pits for bodies.
Investigators said the layout of the site, with large amounts of blood found along an earthen ramp and traces of petrol found at the bottom, suggested the victims were led half-way along to the pit, where they were tortured and killed.
Their bodies were then thrown into the 20m-deep pit. Photographs showed charred spots on the soil suggesting some bodies may have been partially burned.
More than 200 people have disappeared in the border state over the past three years.
Nuevo Leon has seen an increase in violence which police say stems from a deadly fight between the Gulf cartel and their former gang of hit-men, the Zetas, for control over the lucrative drug routes to the United States.
More than 24,800 people have died in drug related violence in Mexico since the government launched a crackdown four years ago.
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