Number of missing on Mexico's highway of death rises to 71

At least 71 people have gone missing this year on a highway between Mexico's industrial hub of Monterrey and the border city of Nuevo Laredo, authorities said Wednesday.

Earlier estimates by relatives of the pg slot victims — at least half a dozen of whom are U.S. residents — had placed the number of disappeared so far this year at around 50.

The head of Mexico's National Search Commission, Karla Quintana, said most of the missing are men who drove trucks or taxis on a road that local media have dubbed “the highway of death.”

Quintana said investigations are focusing on a point near where the highway enters Nuevo Laredo, which has long been dominated by the Northeast drug cartel. Quintana said the disappearances may be related to turf battles between the Jalisco and Northeast cartels.

But the missing also include women and children and men driving private cars.

The FBI office in San Antonio, Texas, has issued a bulletin seeking information on the disappearance of a Laredo, Texas, woman, Gladys Perez Sánchez, and her 16-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, who were last seen. setting out on the highway June 13. They had visited relatives in Sabinas Hidalgo, a town on the highway, and were returning to Texas in their car when they vanished.

In recent months, activists say about a half dozen men have reappeared alive and badly beaten after being abducted on the highway, and all they will say is that armed men forced them to stop on the highway and took their vehicles.

Despite alerts from relatives of the missing, the state government of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is located, didn't warn people against traveling on the highway until almost a month later, on June 23. Authorities have since increased policing and security on the highway. , and are searching for the missing.