Mexico City, September 17 (RHC)-- A hole with 119 bags containing the remains of at least 44 people has been discovered in the municipality of Zapopan, in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. The findings sharpen the insecurity crisis within a country that accounts for more than 3,000 clandestine graves discovered since 2006.

The Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences (IJCF) has so far found that the remains belong to at least 44 people, of which they have identified nine complete bodies, 17 incomplete, nine heads and nine trunks of different people, sources told EFE.

"There are still several pieces that experts continue to analyze,"  meaning the number of victims could increase, the authorities added.  Jalisco’s coordinator of the security, Macedonio Tamez Guajardo, said that the human remains represented between three days and a year of cadaveric evolution.

Experts who have been examining the well for eight days said the way in which the bodies were deposited and hidden makes their identification more difficult as experts must check bone by bone and make tests to determine if they belong to the same skeleton.

Located about a kilometer from a federal police headquarters, the hole of more than ten meters deep is so far, the largest found in Jalisco. In 2013 two mass graves were discovered in the municipality of La Barca, Jalisco with 67 bodies buried inside.

Relatives of the disappeared demand justice and urgent help from the federal government. They do not believe the authorities and are seeking to go to the site to verify for themselves that there have been no more abandoned remains due to negligence.

Despite media pressure, authorities have given little information and have been defending the hypothesis that these are people were linked to organized crime.

“Many of those we have found in the grave had a criminal record. They are human beings, we regret what happened and will investigate, but I must say it as a caution for young people: getting into crime has a high cost,” said Guajardo.

From 2006 to date, more than 76 enforced disappearances in Tabasco have been registered and at least 29 clandestine graves were found.

A report by the Mexican government presented on August 30 indicated that since 2006 and until the middle of August 2019, more than 3,000 clandestine graves with at least 5,000 bodies have been found in the country.