Mexican searchers find 17 bodies buried in backyards, patios 

Mexico City: Volunteers searching for missing family members in Mexico have discovered the remains of 17 people in burial pits, who are believed to have been killed between six months and a year ago. 

As per media reports, the bodies or skeletal remains were buried in the backyards and patios of abandoned houses in the city of Ciudad Obregon (low-income housing development). 

The victims were found in four different burial pits. 

The bodies will be subjected to forensic testing in order to identify them.

Photos posted by the prosecutors’ office showed searchers digging by hand and with a backhoe in the yards, and in some cases under the foundations of the homes. 

Bizarrely, it is more common for bodies to be buried in pits in vacant lots or outside of towns as some drug gangs in Mexico use abandoned or rented houses as execution chambers for kidnap victims or suspected rivals—and simply bury the bodies under the floors or in the yards before abandoning the dwellings. 

The Mexican government has struggled to identify even the bodies that have been found, however, some 52,000 await identification. 

Last week, volunteer searchers found 11 bodies in clandestine burial pits just a few miles from the US border.

According to government data, the country has more than 98,356 disappeared—with many believed to have been killed by cartels and their bodies dumped into shallow graves, burned or dissolved.