FOURTH COCAINE WAR MASS GRAVE IS FOUND IN MEXICO

Police yesterday identified a fourth site near Juarez as a possible mass
grave, amid fears that the search for bodies killed in drug cartel wars
will spread through Mexico.

Up to 200 people have disappeared in the Juarez area and 100 of them,
including 22 Americans, are believed to have been buried locally. The
remains of six unidentified bodies stacked on top of each other have now
been uncovered on a Juarez ranch with the help of FBI agents using radar
detectors.

Jaime Hervella, director of the Association of Relatives and Friends of
Missing Persons in El Paso and Juarez, said he had received many calls from
people throughout Mexico telling him of missing family members. He said
people had been too scared to speak until now because of rife police
corruption, but the arrival of the FBI had encouraged them to come forward.
He said: "One woman in Mexicali told me that five mothers in her apartment
block, including herself, had sons missing and that she knew of many
others."

David Alba, an FBI special agent, said investigators were not looking for
the remains of FBI or DEA agents, though it had been reported that 15 or
more informants working in Mexico for the FBI, US Customs and the Drug
Enforcement Administration began disappearing three years ago. The Mexican
authorities and FBI agents, wearing white overalls and balaclavas, scour
the ranch each morning with ground-piercing radar equipment.

Once the possible site of a grave is located, digging begins with hands and
hoes. Heavy machinery is also being brought in, as some of the bodies are
believed to lie 12ft down. Another team wearing hospital masks and white
gloves sifts through the earth with sieves looking for bones or clothing.

The bodies found nearest the surface have been badly decomposed, while
those at the base of the stack are just bones, suggesting that the grave
was opened to add more bodies at a later date. An FBI spokesman said that
digging would continue for several weeks until it was certain that all the
bodies had been uncovered.

The Mexican attorney-general's office has refused to confirm local reports
that the ranch was owned by the former head of the Juarez drug cartel,
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, through a front man. The death in July 1997 of
Fuentes, who was known as "Lord of the Skies" for his fleet of planes used
for smuggling, caused a violent struggle for control of the drug trade.