Cartel member leads Mexican authorities to secret mass grave

Forensic workers prepare to bury unclaimed bodies in a mass grave at San Rafael cemetery in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, last July. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

A tip from a cartel member led Mexican police to a secret site containing more than 30 graves in the state of Veracruz.

Each grave may contain several people, Mexican authorities said, according to The Daily Mail.

The site covers such a large area that Jorge Winckler, the Veracruz State attorney general, said, 'We will begin the extraction of remains, but we do not know how long it will take us.”

Workers began digging up the area on Wednesday, and have only recovered remains from about 10 percent of the entire area were many more graves are believed to be, the newspaper said.

Secret mass graves have become commonplace in Mexico, where tens of thousands of people are reported missing. Cartels tend to be behind the secret grave sites, where they discard people they kidnapped or rivals they have killed.

Lucia Diaz, whose son, Guillermo Lagunes Dias, has been missing since he was kidnapped in 2013, was quoted by The Daily Mail as saying: 'It shows what we already know -- that Veracruz is strewn with corpses. That is the reality of the state and of Mexico.”

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The discovery of the mass grave in Veracruz comes just days after Mexican officials confirmed the discovery of up to 30 bodies in clandestine burial sites in the state of Sonora.

In this Feb. 27, 2011, photo, state police guard the site where at least 5 bodies were found in a clandestine grave in Santa María Tlalmanalco on the outskirts of Mexico City. For drug lords, Mexico City has been a favorite hideout and place to launder money, making the sprawling metropolis somewhat of an oasis from the cartel violence along the border and in outlying states. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar)

Veracruz has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Zeta and Jalisco drug cartels, but the state also has suffered waves of kidnappings and extortions. In September, authorities found a mass grave -- one of the largest in recent years -- with 168 human skulls in Veracruz State. Prosecutors found the field after a witness told them that "hundreds of bodies" were buried there. Investigators used drones, probes and ground-penetrating radar to locate the pits.

Violence in Mexico has worsened in the last year, with homicides running at their highest rate on record and surpassing the previous peak set in 2011.

Earlier this month, a woman with gunshot wounds was executed inside an ambulance in Mexico’s Pacific state of Guerrero, and paramedics were reportedly beaten by the perpetrators.

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Recently, the archdiocese of the central state of Puebla said in a statement that Rev. Ambrosio Arellano Espinoza, a 78-year-old priest, was apparently tortured during a robbery attempt. It said he had been found with severe burns on his hands and feet, but was at a hospital in stable but serious condition.

While hundreds of mass grave sites date back to the height of the drug war from 2010 to 2016, some are more recent.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.