Nearly 400 human corpses have been found piled high at a building near the Mexico-United States border.
The corpses have been accounted for at a suspected secret crematorium in Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city on the Rio Grande, including 383 complete bodies and six partial remains.
Some of the bodies discovered are understood to have been dead for up to four years, according to local television station KVIA.
Most of the dead appeared to have been embalmed, a process that preserves a dead body by using chemicals to slow down decomposition.
However, it is unclear why they had not been either buried or incinerated in the building which was described as having unsanitary conditions.
Meanwhile, the building’s owner Jose Luis Arellano Cuaron and an employee are to be charged with improper disposal of bodies.
Officials said many of the bodies appear to have come from six different local funeral homes.
Worst still, relatives were reportedly given “ashes” and were under the belief their loved ones had been properly disposed of.
“They constantly received bodies for cremation,” Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui told reporters.
“They misrepresented hundreds of times to funeral companies (that) they would be cremating those bodies.”
María Eugenia Campos Galván, the state’s governor, said that the crematorium had been run by “irresponsible and unscrupulous people who misused these licenses and permits”.
During Joe Biden’s time in the Oval Office, many migrants waiting in Mexico for legal entry into the United States were allegedly kidnapped by suspected cartel gangsters or went missing.
Yadira Cortez, a representative from the Ciudad Juárez Women's Roundtable Network, told KFOX: “Of course, all the families and we ourselves were worried and wondered who is there? What bodies are there? Are they identified?”
The state government has now opened up a process for anyone who believes their loved one may be in the building.
