CIUDAD VICTORIA, August 28, 2010 (AFP) - An official probing the massacre of 72 migrants in northeast Mexico went missing along with a police officer as more bodies were identified and two car bombs shook the region Friday.
The official, Roberto Suarez, was one of the first people to find the bullet-ridden bodies at a ranch near San Fernando, said Tamaulipas state Governor Eugenio Hernandez.
"They took him, along with the municipal police coordinator. They haven`t reappeared. They haven`t given signs of life. We still don`t know where they are," Hernandez told Mexican Radio Formula.
The governor said that troops and police were searching for the missing men and the perpetrators of the migrant killings, suspected of belonging to the notorious Zetas drug gang.
He also said that a car bomb had exploded in state capital Ciudad Victoria early Friday in public transport offices, almost at the same time as another one blew up outside the Televisa TV station.
Both caused material damage but no injuries, a judicial official told AFP.
Diplomats from Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador and Brazil on Friday joined efforts to identify the 72 bodies discovered after a shootout in the violence-plagued northeastern state.
A total of 31 corpses had been identified Friday, including 14 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans, four Guatemalans and a Brazilian, the Tamaulipas attorney general`s office said.
Officials struggled to identify many of the 58 men and 14 women because they did not carry documents.
The gruesome massacre spotlighted the horrific risks taken by hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking to reach the United States each year.
An estimated 400,000 migrants transit through Mexico every year, most of them victims of trafficking by gangs, according to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.
"Ensuring that there is no impunity is crucial to avoid a repetition of such a heinous crime," Pillay said.
Calderon has blamed the deaths on a power struggle between the Gulf gang and the Zetas, their former allies, but officials have not given further information on the probe.
An injured Ecuadoran man claiming to be the massacre`s sole survivor alerted the military to the ranch, where he said the group had been kidnapped and killed by Zetas drug gang members for refusing to work for them.
Mexican marines discovered the corpses after clashing with suspected drug gang members near San Fernando late Tuesday.
They captured an "underage suspect" at the ranch, but the rest of the surviving gunmen escaped.
The presidency said drug gangs increasingly used extortion and kidnapping of migrants for financing and recruitment because they were having problems under a controversial government clampdown on organized crime.
Critics say the growing activities prove the power of the gangs.
Violence has erupted across the country, with more than 28,000 killed since Calderon deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to take on the country`s powerful drug gangs in 2006.
The grisly discovery was the latest mass dumping of bodies in recent months, and the most shocking if all the victims was killed at one time.
"Of course there must be common graves in many parts of Tamaulipas and the country," Hernandez said Friday.
The car bombs are meanwhile part of a frightening new trend in the country`s escalating drug battles.
A first car bomb exploded on July 5 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, leaving several dead.
Televisa, Mexico`s most watched TV network, has had affiliates attacked at least twice this year, most recently in the northern city of Monterrey two weeks ago.
BDST: 1103 HRS, August 28, 2010
