Military personnel have secured a safe house in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco, where they found the remains of about 20 people.

The soldiers also rescued three people who were being held captive.

The incident began when an army patrol spotted a man wearing handcuffs on the side of the road in San Sebastián el Grande. He told the soldiers he had escaped from a nearby property where he was being held captive.

When the patrol approached the property, armed civilians began firing at them. After a firefight, the soldiers took control of the property.

Three individuals fled the scene in a pickup truck toward Santa Anita, also in the municipality of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, and three others were arrested. There were no casualties in the operation.

Soldiers found 18 plastic bags containing human remains on the farm where the safe house was located, as well as 200-liter drums containing mutilated limbs, from which they concluded that about 20 people could have been killed there.

But state Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solís emphasized that the number of victims still cannot be conclusively stated.

“We can’t say with complete certainty the number of bodies that were found at this property,“ he said. “But we’re working with forensic scientists to figure out how many deceased people could be here.”

Source: El Financiero (sp), Animal Político (sp), La Jornada (sp)