MEXICO CITY — Authorities reported Tuesday the discovery of 28 more bodies in a northern state, bringing to 116 the number of dead unearthed since officials began investigating mass kidnappings of bus passengers.
As horror mounts over the savagery in Tamaulipas state, federal officials said they had sent in more troops and would carry out “constant monitoring” of highways in the violence-ravaged border state, big swaths of which are controlled in essence by drug-trafficking gangs.
Officials have arrested 17 people in connection with the graves.
Before Tuesday, a series of mass graves found within a week in rural San Fernando had yielded 88 bodies, amid reports that gunmen were stopping buses and seizing passengers.
Authorities blame the Zetas gang, which was accused last year of kidnapping and killing 72 migrants from Central and South America in the same area after trying to force them to work for the group.
Authorities have not spelled out any motive for the bus attacks on a highway that leads to the U.S. border, 90 miles to the north. The region is traversed by thousands of Mexican and Central American migrants headed for work in the United States.
U.S.-bound migrants crossing Mexico are often targets of robbery or attempts to extort money from loved ones in the U.S. or back home.
A chilling byproduct of the ruthless drug war in Mexico that has killed more than 34,000 people in four years is the disappearance of thousands of people, as the Los Angeles Times reported last month.
