Mexico: Tourist mass grave revealed on YouTube

In another grisly turn in Mexico's drug war, police have recovered 18 bodies from a mass grave. Earlier, a video had been posted on YouTube saying the victims were from a tourist group kidnapped in Acapulco a month ago.

Authorities were continuing their search for more remains at the burial site in Tres Palos, a town just south of the Pacific resort city, yesterday. Police did not yet know if the bodies were from the 20 men abducted at gunpoint on 30 September while visiting Acapulco from neighbouring Michoacan state.

Officers began digging at the site early on Wednesday after receiving an anonymous phone call alerting them to two bodies dumped on an empty lot. Hours earlier, a video had appeared on YouTube in which two men – their hands apparently tied behind their backs and answering questions from an unseen interrogator – say they killed "the Michoacanos" and buried them in the area.

The two bodies reported to police in the tip-off were wearing the same clothes as the pair seen in the video and were lying on top of the mass grave. A sign beside the two men read: "The people they killed are buried here." It was signed by Acapulco's Independent Cartel, or Cida, a little-known drug gang that has been claiming responsibility for killings in the area over the past two months.