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Number of Missing People in Mexico Rises to 30,000 by End-2016


FILE - Photographs of the missing are on display at the future site of the Victims' City in Iguala, Guerrero State, Mexico, Nov. 22, 2016.
FILE - Photographs of the missing are on display at the future site of the Victims' City in Iguala, Guerrero State, Mexico, Nov. 22, 2016.

The number of people in Mexico disappearing under suspicious circumstances, often related to drug violence, rose to 30,000 by the end of 2016, the National Human Rights Commission said Thursday.

At the start of 2013, shortly after President Enrique Pena Nieto took office, the Mexican government reported there were 26,000 so-called "disappeared" people.

The Commission said the number of "disappeared" had risen to 30,000, with the drug-ridden northern state of Tamaulipas registering 5,563 missing, the highest state total.

It said six of Mexico's 32 federal entities failed to respond to its enquiries on the number of missing persons.

The Commission also said it had accounted for 855 mass graves across Mexico over the last decade, finding 1,548 corpses, the large majority of which were male. Just over half of those bodies have been identified, it added.

Well over 100,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico over the last decade.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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