250 skulls exhumed from mass grave in east Mexico

More than 250 human skulls have been found in a mass grave in Mexico’s east state of Veracruz, state prosecutor Jorge Winckler said on Tuesday. (Photo by TUBS [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)])

“I can’t imagine how many more people could be buried there illegally,” Winckler said in an interview aired on the Televisa TV network, hinting the victims could be killed by drug cartels years ago.

Excavation work on the mass grave in the north of Veracruz began in August of last year on the initiative of families of disappeared people, the daily La Jornada reported.

According to Winckler, officials are currently looking for 2,400 people disappeared in the state during the former administration of Governor Javier Duarte, who has been in hiding since his term ended in 2016.

The mass grave is actually comprised of more than a hundred small pits containing plastic bags with the remains of one to six people. Only 30 percent of the site has been excavated to date.

“When they finish opening the mass graves that exist in the state, it is going to be the biggest mass grave in Mexico, and maybe one of the biggest mass graves in the world,” said Winckler.

Relatives of the missing people have been working alongside officials, digging through the grave to recover the bodies for eventual identification.

Because no bullet shells have been found at the site, the victims were probably killed elsewhere, then brought here for disposal.