52,000 BODIES PILE UP

Mexico’s forensic services have a backlog of more than 50,000 unidentified bodies thanks to the gang and drug violence wracking the country.

The Movement for Our Disappeared in Mexico warned that the country was facing “a deep forensic crisis” in the identification of human remains.

Sixty per cent of the roughly 52,000 unidentified bodies lie in mass graves in public cemeteries, according to the report, which obtained the figures through public information requests to the forensic services.

The rest are at forensic facilities, universities or locations that the government was unable or unwilling to confirm, it said.

The figures “show how the increase in violence in the past 15 years has had a major impact on society, particularly in forced disappearances”.