Body count at mass graves now 145

Morelos Canseco, a senior government official for the state of Tamaulipas where the clandestine burials were discovered, said another 23 bodies were extracted Thursday. Unlike the previous victims, who are thought to have been bus passengers kidnapped recently, the latest corpses had apparently been buried for a much longer time, Canseco said in a radio interview.

Canseco said none of the bus companies whose passengers were kidnapped ever informed authorities about the crimes. The newspaper Reforma reported Friday that there are 400 unclaimed suitcases at bus depots in the route's final destination city of Matamoros.

President Felipe Calderón, whose government has come under withering criticism for failure to protect its citizens on national roadways, on Friday condemned the Tamaulipas killings as "barbaric cowardice" and pledged more troops for the area and to search for additional suspects.

All 145 of the bodies have been found in pits around the town of San Fernando, about 80 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. Digging continues in search of additional victims, state officials said.

Elsewhere, 10 complete bodies, three headless bodies and four severed heads were found when authorities dug up a pit in a house in the state of Durango, authorities said Friday.

Authorities are determining whether some of the heads belonged to the bodies. The badly decayed corpses - which have not been identified - were taken to a morgue for autopsies, the Durango state prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Durango has been the scene of a bloody turf battle between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas gang.

Also Friday, Mexico's army announced that it had captured a man who allegedly confessed to participating in the killing of a well-known poet's son and six other people.

The March 28 slaying of Juan Francisco Sicilia, the son of poet Javier Sicilia, sparked demonstrations throughout the country against the drug-war violence, which has claimed more than 34,000 lives.