Human remains found in 45 bags dumped in a ravine in the western Mexican state of Jalisco belonged to eight young men and women who had been reported missing, local authorities confirmed Tuesday.

Last week, in the community of Sapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state, authorities searching for eight missing call center workers announced that they had found human remains at the bottom of a 40-meter ravine.

“The evidence (…) confirms that these are young people who worked at a call center in Sapopan and had been reported missing,” the Jalisco state government said in a press release it released, citing forensic reports.

The victims, two women and six men, aged in their thirties, were last seen alive between May 20 and 22, according to statements from their families.

The location where they were working is not far from the area where the human remains were found.

The federal government, based on initial investigation data, said the call center was involved in illegal activities, particularly real estate fraud.

The state of Jalisco has the highest number of disappearances in all of Mexico, more than 15,000 since 1962, out of a total of 110,771 across the territory, according to official data.

In 2021, approximately 70 bags containing the remains of eleven people were found in Tonala, near Guadalajara.

Security experts say the numbers are largely explained by wars between cartels, including Jalisco’s New Generation gang, for control of the drug market.

Mexico has seen more than 340,000 murders, most of which the authorities attribute to gangs, since the so-called “war on drugs”, the authorities’ controversial operation against cartels and the deployment of the military inside the country, began in December 2006.