35 abductees found in northeastern Mexico

Mexican authorities said Thursday they had found 35 people who had been held hostage in the northeastern state of San Luis Potosi.

The captives were found in a desert in the region of Matehuala, where they had been reported missing, regional authorities said.

The group had been guarded by armed men in five vans, authorities said.

But the captors fled in two of the vans and abandoned the abductees after security forces arrived, state spokesman Miguel Angel Gallegos told a local television station.

There is "a good chance" that among those who left in the vehicles "there are people who had remained unaccounted for," he added.

Preliminary information indicated that the group were migrants, the public security ministry said in a statement.

Some of those rescued identified themselves as migrants travelling for work, Gallegos said.

"They say they are migrants, they are not tourists, they are not passers-by," he said.

Gallegos said that the captors demanded ransom for the missing people, but that was not confirmed by state authorities.

The travelers were abducted on federal highway 57, a main route between Mexico's central and northern states.

Local media and some authorities had initially reported that 23 people were missing.

 

AFP