FBI SCOURS MEXICO MASS GRAVE

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- FBI agents excavating a suspected mass grave of
drug cartel victims began retrieving human remains Tuesday.

Armed Mexican soldiers wearing ski masks to avoid reprisals protected the
site as the FBI joined Mexican officials in the painstaking exhumation of
graves thought to contain at least 100 people, possibly including 22
Americans.

Recovery efforts centered on two sites south of El Paso.

Since an informant revealed the graves' existence five days ago, a Texas
missing-persons association said it has received hundreds of calls from
people who say their relatives vanished from Juarez.

''(Callers) want to know what's happened to their loved ones,'' said Jaime
Hervella of the International Association of Relatives and Friends of
Disappeared Persons.

Those related to possible victims can call an FBI hotline at 1-800-338-5856.

Working at the site are 65forensic experts from an FBI team that exhumed
victims of terror in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Most of the victims are believed to have come from Juarez, one of the bases
of the so-called Juarez cartel that emerged as the dominant Mexican drug
trafficking organization in the mid-1990s. It funneled billions of dollars'
worth of cocaine, marijuana and heroin into the USA each year.

President Clinton condemned the killings as ''horrible examples'' of the
violence committed by Mexican drug lords.

The Mexican government requested FBI assistance because of the bureau's
expertise and equipment, including ground-penetrating radar, and also
because several U.S. agencies have lost confidential sources in bloody
killings.

''We've all got informants missing down there,'' a federal official said
late Tuesday.