18 bodies found at mass grave in Mexico

Mexico City, Nov 7 (IANS/EFE) The bodies of six kidnapped tourists were among the 18 corpses found this week at a clandestine grave near Mexico’s Pacific resort of Acapulco, authorities said.

The head of the Guerrero state investigative police force, Fernando Monreal, told EFE Saturday that six of the bodies corresponded to members of a group of 20 kidnapped tourists from the neighbouring state of Michoacan.

He said work was still being carried out to identify the other badly decomposed bodies found Wednesday at a mass grave in Tuncingo, a town outside Acapulco.

The search that led to the grave began after two dead men were dumped at the same place Tuesday accompanied by a message about additional bodies buried nearby.

A video posted Wednesday on the internet indicated that the remains found in Tuncingo could be those of the group of tourists from Michoacan.

The tourists were kidnapped by an armed gang Sep 30, although two members of the group apparently managed to escape and file a report with the Guerrero police.

The video shows two badly beaten men — apparently the pair dumped Tuesday in Tuncingo — confessing that they killed the visitors from Michoacan in response to the move by Michoacan-based La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel, to seize control of the drug trade in Ciudad Altamirano, Guerrero.

A total of 85 people have died at the hands of organised crime in the past two weeks near Acapulco, a important domestic tourism destination.

Guerrero, like several other Mexican states, is wracked by turf wars between heavily armed drug cartels. Drug-related violence has claimed nearly 30,000 lives nationwide since December 2006.

–IANS/EFE