Police in Mexico have found 10 decapitated bodies and eleven severed heads in the southern state of Guerrero, where 43 students have gone missing and are feared to have been mass slaughtered by drug gangs.
The headless corpses were found in graves near the city of Chilapa, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) east of Guerrero State’s capital, Chilpancingo. The bodies had their hands tied, and displayed signs of torture, local security officials said on Wednesday.
Eleven heads were also unearthed inside four black plastic bags in another grave in the same area.
In late November, 11 other headless bodies were found in the same area.
Guerrero is the state where 43 students disappeared on September 26, 2014, after police, suspected of being linked to gangs, attacked their buses and arrested them. The students are then believed to have been handed by the police to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang.
Members of the gang later told investigators that the young men were taken to a landfill, where they were killed, burned, and dumped into a river.
Mexico’s government is still investigating the issue. A piece of bone found earlier in a bag of ash was identified by foreign experts to belong to one of the Mexican students.
Mexican President Pena Nieto has come under fierce pressure to put an end to drug violence in the country.