MEXICO CITY: Nine bodies have been discovered in the first of three mass graves found in rural Mexico after locals alerted authorities to the stench of rotting flesh, an official in Nayarit state said Tuesday.
"The first grave was located on Saturday. There were nine bodies," an official in the local prosecutors' office told AFP on condition of not being identified because the official was not authorized to speak to media.
Two other graves were detected nearby with remains "in an advanced state of decomposition," the source said.
Tests were being carried out to determine if those remains were human also and, if so, how many people had been buried. Efforts were being made to identify the bodies, to see if they matched missing persons.
Local media reported the three graves could contain more than 20 people.
The corpses were found in remote terrain near banana plantations in the village of Pantanal.
Nayarit, in western Mexico, borders the states of Sinaloa and Jalisco, where powerful drug cartels are behind a violent crime wave.
According to official data, 117 people were recorded as missing last year in Nayarit.
The country has seen around 200,000 violent deaths since December 2006, when the government launched a military crackdown on the cartels. There was no official breakdown as to how many of those were linked to criminal organizations.