Four bodies were found Wednesday east of Matamaros, near where three young Americans went missing more than two weeks ago, a Mexican state official said.
Tamaulipas state investigator Raul Galindo Vira would only confirm that four bodies had been recovered and declined to discuss who they might be.
A second state official said investigators were trying to determine if the dead include three siblings from Progreso, Texas, who disappeared with a fourth person Oct. 13. The official, who said the bodies were badly decomposed, insisted on speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Mexican authorities on Wednesday asked the siblings' father what they were wearing when they disappeared, mother Raquel Alvarado told The Associated Press.
Alvarado said witnesses saw armed men take her daughter, Erica Alvarado Rivera, 26, and her sons, Alex, 22, and Jose Angel, 21, in El Control, a small town near the Texas border west of Matamoros. The three were visiting their father in Mexico.
According to Alvarado, her daughter, Erica, mother of four children aged 3-9, drove her black Jeep Cherokee across the border Oct. 12 and dropped it at her father's house in El Control. She visited her boyfriend there and the next morning called her brothers to ask them to bring the Cherokee to a roadside restaurant where the couple was eating. The three siblings planned to return to Progreso together from there.
When Alex and Jose Angel Alvarado arrived to pick up their sister, they saw men "pushing their sister and her boyfriend and hitting her," Raquel Alvarado said.
She said witnesses also saw federal highway police, "but no one did anything."
A spokeswoman for the city of Matamoros did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Authorities say police attacked the students on orders from the mayor because of fears the students planned to disrupt a speech by the mayor's wife. Officers allegedly turned the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel. In a month of searching the area, federal authorities have discovered several clandestine mass graves but no sign of the students.
President Enrique Pena Nieto held a closed-door meeting Wednesday with parents of the missing students.
Tamaulipas state investigator Raul Galindo Vira would only confirm that four bodies had been recovered and declined to discuss who they might be.
A second state official said investigators were trying to determine if the dead include three siblings from Progreso, Texas, who disappeared with a fourth person Oct. 13. The official, who said the bodies were badly decomposed, insisted on speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Mexican authorities on Wednesday asked the siblings' father what they were wearing when they disappeared, mother Raquel Alvarado told The Associated Press.
Alvarado said witnesses saw armed men take her daughter, Erica Alvarado Rivera, 26, and her sons, Alex, 22, and Jose Angel, 21, in El Control, a small town near the Texas border west of Matamoros. The three were visiting their father in Mexico.
According to Alvarado, her daughter, Erica, mother of four children aged 3-9, drove her black Jeep Cherokee across the border Oct. 12 and dropped it at her father's house in El Control. She visited her boyfriend there and the next morning called her brothers to ask them to bring the Cherokee to a roadside restaurant where the couple was eating. The three siblings planned to return to Progreso together from there.
When Alex and Jose Angel Alvarado arrived to pick up their sister, they saw men "pushing their sister and her boyfriend and hitting her," Raquel Alvarado said.
The brothers tried to intervene, witnesses said, but were taken away with their sister and her boyfriend. Witnesses said the armed men identified themselves as Grupo Hercules, a police security unit for Matamoros city officials, and were traveling in military style trucks.
She said witnesses also saw federal highway police, "but no one did anything."
A spokeswoman for the city of Matamoros did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mexico already is engulfed in a national controversy over the disappearance of 43 teachers college students Sept. 26 at the hands of police in Iguala, a city in the southern state of Guerrero.
Authorities say police attacked the students on orders from the mayor because of fears the students planned to disrupt a speech by the mayor's wife. Officers allegedly turned the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel. In a month of searching the area, federal authorities have discovered several clandestine mass graves but no sign of the students.
President Enrique Pena Nieto held a closed-door meeting Wednesday with parents of the missing students.
