Dozens of skeletons were found in hidden graves in Mexico near the US border

Mexico City Mexican authorities have found 12 bodies buried in secret graves in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, officials said Thursday.

The state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that authorities found 11 graves containing 12 skeletons in the municipality of Ascension, close to the US border.

She added, “The discovery was made during tracking operations that took place on December 18, 19, and 20.”

“The skeletons and unidentified evidence were transferred to the laboratories of the forensic service” in the city of Ciudad Juarez to identify them and determine possible causes of death, she added.

Drug cartels and kidnapping gangs in Mexico often use secret burial grounds to dispose of the bodies of their victims or rivals. This horrific practice has exacerbated the enormous problem of missing persons in Mexico, who now number approximately 120,000.

Relatives of most of these missing persons are largely left to search for their loved ones themselves, often forming volunteer search parties that venture out into the desert in search of secret graves. It was not known whether any of those volunteer groups helped authorities locate the graves in Ascension.

For years, Chihuahua has witnessed violence linked to organized crime as a means of drug smuggling and smuggling immigrants to the United States.

It has recorded 3,927 missing persons since 1952, according to official figures. Jalisco and Tamaulipas, the two states most affected by the violence, recorded more than 13,000 people missing in the same period.

Mexico has seen more than 450,000 people killed in drug-related violence since the government deployed the army to combat drug trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.