Forty-five bags containing human remains were found in a valley in the state of Jalisco, western Mexico, during the search for eight young men working in a call center who had been missing for ten days, according to local authorities Friday.

"Forty-five bags containing the remains of men and women were recovered," the office of Attorney General Luis Joaquin Mendez said in a statement. "I want to make it clear that the number of bags does not correspond to the number of victims who were found in them," he told reporters at the location where the bags were found.

The bags were found at the bottom of a 40-meter-deep valley in Zapopan, near Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state.

The authorities had launched a campaign to find two women and six men, all in their 30s, who went missing between May 20 and 22.

The prosecution said that the organs found in the bags match the specifications of some of the missing.

Mendez confirmed that there are indications of a physical and metric match with some of the victims. "I cannot give the exact number because we need the forensic doctors' reports," he added.

The six missing persons were working in a call center located in the same area where the bags were found.

Federal authorities indicated that this call center was involved in real estate fraud and telephone extortion.

However, the relatives of the missing people rejected this hypothesis, accusing the authorities of turning the victims into criminals.

In recent years, human remains have been found in bags or in secret graves in different regions of the state of Jalisco, where more than 15,000 people have gone missing since 1962.

In 2021, seventy bags containing the remains of 11 people were found in Tonala, near Guadalajara.

More than 340,000 murders and the loss of about 100,000 people have been recorded in Mexico, mainly attributed to criminal organizations, since the launch of a wide and controversial military campaign in December 2006 aimed at combating drug trafficking.