Mexico's government has found a long-running body disposal site near the border city of Nuevo Laredo, as announced by Mexican officials on Wednesday night.

The National Search Commission said the location was discovered weeks earlier and is being probed within the reported cases of disappearances, according to a Border Report media release.

The commission said in a statement that the characteristics of the site point to the possibility that it is an extermination site that has been used for years and was only recently discovered.

The commission added that this will have to be confirmed by experts. They also noted that it is the first site found in Nuevo Laredo.

Searchers had found burned human remains on the ground, with several possible clandestine graves and crematorium, according to a KRGV report.

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Drug Cartels Using Clandestine Graves

In May 2017, more than 250 skulls have been found in what appears to be a drug cartel mass burial ground in the city of Veracruz, according to an Associated Press News report.

Veracruz's top prosecutor, Jorge Winckler, said that the pits have human remains of cartel victims that were killed years ago.

Winckler added that it seemed the burials had happened before the new state administration had taken office at the time.

He noted that drug cartels disappeared people and that authorities were complacent. He was seemingly referring to the administration of former Gov. Javier Duarte and his predecessors.

The prosecutor said at the time that only two sets of remains have been identified, which were a police detective and his assistant.

He described Veracruz as an enormous "mass grave," saying that he cannot imagine how many more people are illegally buried there with state reports at the time that about 2,400 people are still missing.

Last October, 59 bodies have been discovered in a mass grave site located in a region of central Mexico. The area was known to have suffered some of the highest levels of drug violence in recent years, according to a Reuters report in 2020.

Karla Quintana, head of Mexico's National Search Commission, said that at least 10 of the corpses were women and most of the bodies belonged to very young people, even teenagers.

Homicide rate in the state of Guanajuato had risen amid a raging turf war between rival gangs. It recorded 2,250 homicides between January and August of 2020, which is a more than 25 increase over the same period compared to the previous year.

Forced Disappearances in Mexico

Forced disappearances in Mexico largely go unsolved, with many of the cases have been investigated, but there was a reference to collusion between security forces and organized crime groups, according to a Foreign Policy report.

Many relatives of victims were discouraged from reporting their disappeared family members to the police.

In 2017, the General Law on Disappearances was passed, which created agencies and commissions to address the cases. However, many commissions lack adequate funding, with few accountability measures exist to ensure that they fulfill their obligations.

These factors had prompted family members of the victims to continue the search themselves.

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Mexico's largest clandestine graves discovered - from Al Jazeera English