Authorities in the state of Colima, western Mexico, announced Thursday that they had found at least 26 bodies, buried in mass graves in the town of Tucman.

"Ten mass graves have been identified so far, and human skeletal remains of 26 people have been found," said Hector Javier Peña, official of the state's Office of the Special Prosecutor for Disappeared Persons.

It was possible to reach these remains using marches and dogs in the Cerro de Ortega area in the state of Tucman, in which several bodies had previously been found, buried secretly since 2018.

Research is still ongoing, as the authorities do not rule out the presence of remains of other people.

Ports in the state of Colima on the Pacific coast are a key point on the drug-trafficking route, as smugglers use them to pass on such substances as fentanyl, which can cause a sedation 50 times stronger than heroin.

Mexico has witnessed more than 340,000 killings and the disappearance of about 100,000 people, mostly attributed to criminal groups, since the launch of an operation to combat drug traffickers at the end of 2006.