Another 32 Bodies Discovered in Mexican State Hit by Ongoing Drug War

MEXICO CITY – Another 32 bodies have been discovered in three homes in Mexico's eastern state of Veracruz, where dozens of corpses were dumped on a road in broad daylight last month, the navy said late Thursday.

The macabre discovery came two days after the government announced the deployment of extra police and soldiers to the Gulf coast state, the site of the latest flare-up of violence in the country's brutal drug war.

"The federal government regrets to announce the discovery of 32 bodies," the navy said in a statement, without providing further details.

An apparent vigilante group calling itself the "Zeta Killers" claimed responsibility for the killings of the 35 people found on the road last month, saying it was an ally of authorities against the feared Zetas cartel.

Police said nearly all of those killed in the incident last month were criminals, but have vowed to go after anyone suspected of taking the law into their own hands.

Earlier this week, security officials announced the detention of 32 alleged members of the Zetas, including 18 municipal police officers, in Veracruz.

The Zetas -- set up in the 1990s by former elite soldiers turned hired killers -- are fighting their former allies the Gulf cartel and others in a growing stretch of Mexico and Guatemala.

Some 41,000 people have been killed since Mexico launched a major crackdown in 2006 against powerful drug gangs which are themselves locked in brutal turf wars over lucrative trade routes from Central America to the United States.

The violence has been marked by a series of grisly displays of brutality, including kidnappings, beheadings and mass graves.