MEXICO: Mexico will build a cemetery in one of the country's most dangerous cities because of a high number of unidentified and unclaimed dead, authorities said Friday.
More than 15,000 people were murdered in Ciudad Juarez between 2008 and 2019, including 1,497 last year, according to official figures.
"It is intended for the victims of the northern area of Chihuahua, precisely because of the large number of unidentified people or those who no one is claiming," Eberth Castanon Torres, coordinator at the local prosecutor's office, told AFP.
The cemetery will cover 50,000 square miles, have a visual identification area, a body preparation area, and six funeral cold rooms for 300 corpses.
Some 2,400 burial niches are reserved for temporarily storing bodies. Prosecutors hope that the site will allow them to obtain genetic profiles of victims.
Since December 2016 -- when the federal government launched a military offensive against the drug cartels -- around 275,000 assassinations have been recorded in Mexico, according to official data.