FBI JOINS CASE AS SCORES OF BODIES ARE FOUND IN MEXICO

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Mexican authorities and the FBI have begun a joint
investigation after the bodies of about 100 missing U.S. and Mexican
citizens were reportedly found on ranches near this border city --
apparently victims of drug-related killings.

At Mexico's request, the FBI is sending agents and forensic experts south of
the border to help recover and identify victims' remains, the Mexican
Attorney General's Office said in a statement.

The statement made no mention of bodies being found but said the
investigation aimed to resolve the apparently drug-related killings.

"In the past four years in Ciudad Juarez citizens of both nationalities have
disappeared without a trace," the statement said.

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office said he had no official
information about whether bodies had been discovered. But an FBI agent
speaking on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press in Washington,
D.C., that as many as 100 bodies had been found on two ranches near Ciudad
Juarez, which across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Last night, dozens of armed soldiers, some wearing black ski masks,
surrounded one of the ranches, in a desolate area about 10 miles south of
Ciudad Juarez.

White iron gates towered in front of the ranch, while a concrete block wall,
covered with graffiti, surrounded the rest of the property, located across
the street from a junkyard. Topping the concrete wall was a chain-link fence
with razor wire.

Rodrigo Falcon, 18, said he and his family were caring for the ranch in the
absence of the property's owner, whom he identified as Jorge Ortiz of El
Paso. He said Ortiz hadn't been there for a while.

Falcon, who was on the verge of tears, said the soldiers wouldn't let him
inside when he arrived home from work at a factory.

Prosecutions of Mexican drug traffickers along the Texas border have also
been undermined by the disappearances of witnesses and informants, some of
whom have been kidnapped from American soil.

Prodded by citizens in both countries, including the Association of
Relatives of Disappeared Persons, the Mexican authorities carried out a long
inquiry into the disappearances, but had little success.

In January, the Mexican attorney general, Jorge Madrazo Cuellar,
acknowledged that drug traffickers had infiltrated a police agent into the
special unit that was investigating the disappearances.

An informer who described the killings to the FBI said some had been carried
out by Mexican federal policemen who worked as hired assassins for the drug
gangs that operate from Juarez, which is one of the main gateways for
cocaine and other drugs being shipped through Mexico into the United States.