MEXICO CITY (AP) — Volunteer searchers have found 12 skeletons and one decomposed body in a shallow pit in the desert near the Mexican resort of Puerto Penasco.

Prosecutors in the northern border state of Sonora said late Thursday that two of the bodies may be women.

Prosecutors said only one of the bodies was relatively recent; the others were “complete skeletons with clothing.”

The bodies were found by a group known as the Searchers of Puerto Penasco, made up of relatives of missing people who investigate reports of clandestine burial sites.

Drug and kidnapping gangs use such pits to dispose of the bodies of victims or rivals.

Puerto Penasco is also known as Rocky Point. It is located on the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez.

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