Mexico: 226 bodies recovered from mass graves.

The number of bodies recovered from mass graves rose to 226 in the city of Durango (north), and it the biggest find of its kind in Mexico, said Wednesday the state Public Security Secretariat.

The previous balance was aware of 218 victims, but now the figure "of amounts to 226 bodies exhumed , "he told AFP an official of the department. Excavation work in Durango, 600,000, began on 11 April.

The military placed the first six graves with 218 bodies, but last week found inside a house located in an upper middle class neighborhood pit seventh and six more bodies on Tuesday pulled two more bodies.

So far the authorities have attributed the killings to any drug. The number of bodies found in Durango is the largest located in one place in Mexico surpassing even San Fernando, a rural town 160 km northeast of the border United States, where in April also found 183 bodies in 40 mass graves in cartel murders attributed to the Zetas.

Durango, a state near the Pacific coast, where influences the Sinaloa cartel, has recently been dogged by the advance of Los Zetas, another criminal organization that moves from the Gulf of Mexico.

Mexico is riding a wave of violence attributed to drug trafficking, which leaves more than 37,000 dead since December 2006 when the government of Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels supported by military deployment.

Seventy-three linked to the graves of Tamaulipas

A judge ordered the arrest of 73 people for alleged links with the discovery of 183 bodies in mass graves in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas (northeast) , said Wednesday federal prosecutors.

A federal judge in Tamaulipas "issued an arrest warrant against 73 accused" by the clandestine graves in San Fernando , a town located 160 km from the border with the United States, the agency said in a statement.

The 73 suspects were arrested in April when the graves were found in San Fernando , and placed under provisional arrest pending the prosecution to present evidence before the judge, the agency said.

The bodies located in San Fernando correspond to victims of cartel Los Zetas, which many of them kidnapped while traveling by bus passengers to the border to immigrate to the United States.

San Fernando was also the scene of the slaughter in August of 72 migrants from Central and South America.