MASS BURIAL DISCOVERED IN MEXICO

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) -- Mexico and the FBI have launched a joint
investigation after the bodies of about 100 missing U.S. and Mexican
citizens were found on two ranches near this Mexican border town -- possibly
victims of drug-related killings, officials said Monday.

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 the graves, but said the investigation
aimed to resolve the apparently drug-related killings and disappearances of
Mexican and U.S. citizens.

"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
that as many as 100 bodies had been found on two ranches near Ciudad Juarez,
a city across the border from El Paso, Texas.

On Monday 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.

No bodies were seen being carried out, but several soldiers left the ranch
carrying duffle bags. No one at the scene would talk to reporters and a news
conference scheduled for Monday night in Ciudad Juarez was canceled.

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 from work at a nearby factory.

It could not immediately be determined how many agents from both countries
were involved in the investigation, but CBS News reported that about 200
agents and forensic specialists were committed to the operation and that
exhumations were to begin Tuesday.

It also could not be determined when the bodies were first discovered on the
two ranches in northern Mexico.