Seven Found Dead in Central Mexico

PUEBLA, Mexico – The bodies of seven people were found in a rural area near the central Mexican town of San Jose Acateno, authorities said Thursday.

Municipal police received a report in the wee hours of the morning about the presence of bodies wrapped in blankets at a roadside depression known as El Hundimiento.

Police retrieved the bodies and are working to identify them, the Puebla state Attorney General’s Office said.

Authorities from Puebla and neighboring Veracruz state spent more than eight hours searching El Hundimiento and environs, the AG office said.

Two women in the region were murdered last week and plastic bags containing the bodies of two men who bore signs of torture were discovered in the area on July 7.

San Jose Acateno, a town of some 8,500 people, sits on the boundary with crime-wracked Veracruz, where gunmen killed six people, including a reporter and a Zetas drug cartel boss, in an attack on a bar early Thursday.