Fronteras

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Forensic specialists in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua are working to identify human remains found scattered on a mountainside across the border from Ft. Hancock, Texas.

Mexican authorities have identified three teenage girls among the remains discovered by police earlier this month.

The girls had been reported missing in the last three years and the remains are now with their families.

Authorities don't know the total number of corpses as most are badly decomposed. The site is south of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, where a pattern of disappeared young women began emerging four years ago. Most went missing from the downtown area or while traveling by bus.

Hundreds of women have been brutally murdered in Juárez over the past two decades. Some of their bodies were found dumped in the desert.

State police currently have a list of more than one hundred missing women.