Seventy-two dead bodies have been found on a Mexican ranch near the US border in what’s being described as the single deadliest attack of Mexico’s drug war. A wounded survivor told police the killers had identified themselves as members of a notorious drug gang called the Zelas. The head of Mexico’s National Security Council, Alejandro Poiré Romero, said the victims were undocumented immigrants from several Latin American countries.

Alejandro Poiré Romero: “Yesterday, the marines repelled an aggression by alleged organized criminals during an operation in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, where seventy-two people were found dead — fifty-eight men and fourteen women. And according preliminary information that needs to be confirmed, they could be illegal immigrants of several nationalities, including El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and Brazil.”