Mexican authorities searching for missing young people make gruesome discovery

Mexican authorities found 45 bags containing an unknown number of human remains.

The bags were found at an overlook of a forested area on the outskirts of Guadalajara in northwestern Mexico, the state prosecutor’s office of Jalisco said Wednesday in a statement, according to a report from The Associated Press.

Firefighters and civil defense workers recovered the bags, which contained an unknown amount of bodies of both men and women, using a helicopter to recover them from the gorge where they were located. Work on recovering the bodies is expected to continue in the coming days, authorities said.

MEXICAN SEARCHERS EXHUME 53 BAGS OF HUMAN REMAINS AFTER DOG IS SPOTTED CARRYING HUMAN HAND

Mexican authorities were attempting to locate seven young people who were reported missing last week when they found the site with the bags, which were at a site reported to contain human remains, although it’s not clear if the seven were among those whose remains were in the bags.

According to the report, over 110,000 people are missing in Mexico, 15,000 of whom are missing from Jalisco, the highest number of any state. The country also has thousands of unidentified remains it its morgues and cemeteries.

The latest discovery is not the first time Mexican authorities have found bags full of human remains, coming less than a year after authorities located 53 bags of remains in Irapuato, Guanajuato State, in November.

In that case, authorities were alerted to the possibility of a site containing human remains after a dog was reported walking around with a human hand in its mouth.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.