MEXICO CITY, May 2, (AP): Trailed by search dogs and police, María de Jesús Soria Aguayo and more than a dozen volunteers walked carefully through fields of weeds and dry earth with their eyes fixed on the ground Wednesday.
On the fringes of Mexico City, the group was looking for human remains and other evidence after volunteer searchers said the site might be the location of a clandestine crematorium.
The search came after Ceci Flores, a leader of a group seeking the bodies of Mexico's missing, announced on social media late Tuesday that her team had found bones, clandestine burial pits and ID cards around a charred pit on the southern outskirts of the city.
However, Ulises Lara, Mexico City’s chief prosecutor, disputed the claims Wednesday night, saying that officials found 14 bones and all were of "animal origin.”
"We can confirm that it is not a crematorium, nor from a clandestine grave,” he said.
Flores' announcement on social media a day earlier had gained attention because it was the first time in recent memory that anyone claimed to have found such a body disposal site in the Mexican capital.
If such a site were found, it could be a blow to Mexico's governing Morena party in the runup to June 2 elections. Morena says violence in Mexico hasn't rippled to Mexico City while it has controlled the local government.
The search Wednesday underscored the slog many Mexican families face as they seek the remains of the 110,000 people declared missing amid cartel violence.
The volunteers, like Soria Aguayo, are mostly the mothers of the disappeared. They have formed their own independent groups to search in violence-torn swaths of Mexico.