Eight bodies have been found in tourism hotspot Cancun as an ex-New York cop warns it's the "most dangerous time ever to travel to Mexico."
The human remains were discovered over the weekend around ten miles from Cancun's beach and hotel zone - with cops believing the bodies had been dumped there between one week and two months ago.
Five of the bodies were found at an abandoned construction site and three of them were later identified as previously reported missing people, according to Oscar Montes de Oca, the head prosecutor of the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo.
Volunteer searchers, including the relatives of missing people, and specially trained dogs participated with investigators in the searches.
The three other remains were found in a separate site on the outskirts of Cancun near the resort's airport. They have not been identified.
Similar searches were also carried out in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, a town south of Tulum.
Michael Alcazar, a former New York Police Department detective, thinks Americans travelling to Mexico should reconsider their plans.
He said: “Right now, it seems the most dangerous time [ever] to travel to Mexico.
“The Mexican Government doesn’t have any control over what’s happening with the cartels. The cartels seem to be running riot.”
The US State Department issued travel guidance last month that warns travellers to “exercise increased caution,” especially near resorts such as Cancun - with more than 112,000 people listed as missing throughout Mexico.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw has advised against people travelling to Mexico.
He said: "Drug cartel violence and other criminal activity represent a significant safety threat to anyone who crosses into Mexico right now."
"We have a duty to inform the public about safety, travel risks and threats. Based on the volatile nature of cartel activity and the violence we are seeing there, we are urging individuals to avoid travel to Mexico at this time."
The warning comes after Latavia McGee, Shaeed Woodward, Eric James and Zindell Brown were kidnapped on March 3 after driving from South Carolina to Mexico to help support their friend undergoing a tummy tuck.
The four were traveling in a white minivan with North Carolina licence plates when they came under fire shortly after entering the city of Matamoros from Brownsville, at the southernmost tip of Texas near the Gulf coast.
CCTV footage captured the moment being loaded into a pickup truck in the northeast Mexico city of Matamoros.
After a huge police hunt to find the "Gulf Cartel" they were found on March 7 - around six miles from where the group were kidnapped.
Ms McGee and Mr James were rescued last Tuesday but the dead bodies of Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, two of the Americans kidnapped in Mexico, were found.
The DEA has since identified José 'El Contador' Cárdenas as the leader of the Gulf Cartel, which has been around since 1930 and is based out of Tamaulipas.
He is the leader of "The Cyclones" and "The Scorpions" - two powerful cartel groups in the state of Tamaulipas.
The US government has put almost every state in Mexico under a travel risk with some even labelled as "do not travel" or "reconsider travel" and asked tourists to "exercise increased caution."
Meanwhile, the body of a Californian man who went missing almost three months ago was found in a secret burial site and two people were arrested for murder, earlier in April.
Californian Wilmer 'Dino' Trivett disappeared on February 11 while camping on the Mexican peninsula of Baja California.
A local man and his sister were arrested in connection with the murder of the 80-year-old, state prosecutor Daniel de la Rosa said.
He added that the incident stemmed from a traffic dispute. Mr Trivett's camper van was found burned out on February 23.
A specially trained cadaver dog found the body near Pacific coast town of Todos Santos.
De la Rosa said that Mr Trivett, from Markleeville, near Lake Tahoe, had paid the two suspects around £2,500 following a previous traffic accident but the pair allegedly later decided it wasn't enough money, abducted Mr Trivett and then killed him.
And an American teen girl has vanished in a Mexican cartel hotspot - with authorities issuing an urgent "Amber Alert."
US citizen Shelbie Lynn Dwyer, 17, disappeared in Salvador Alvarado Municipality, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, on March 31, with the cops issuing the alert on April 17.
The Sinaloa State Attorney General's Office said that Shelbie may "have fallen victim to a crime".
The Mexican authorities are appealing to the public for help to locate the teen, who they said may have last been spotted at an internet cafe called Curiosita.
