Eleven kidnapping victims were rescued during a Mexican police operation aimed at capturing various gunmen with the Gulf Cartel. The raid of the cartel torture house resulted resulted in the discovery of a clandestine grave site, and the arrest of multiple hit-men.

The gunmen had been operating the cartel torture house in the southern part of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas and the northern part of Veracruz. They were kidnapping highway travelers from southern states who were then tortured and held for ransom before getting murdered, information released to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas government revealed.

The operation was carried out by Mexican federal police officers in the town of Pueblo Viejo, Veracruz, when they raided a Gulf Cartel stash house. This is where gunmen held and tortured 11 victims while they demanded ransom from their families. The victims had been held between five and twenty days and showed various signs of being malnourished.

During the raid, authorities found a septic tank that was being used by the cartel gunmen as a clandestine grave site to hide the bodies of their victims. Authorities sealed up the area while forensic specialist could carry out the necessary investigations.

The kidnapping victims who were rescued alive were ten men from the Mexican states of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Veracruz. The eleventh victim was a man from South America.

During the raid authorities arrested ten cartel gunmen including two teenagers who were described as 17 and 15-years-old. They are prime suspects in the murders of some of the victims. Jesus Ivan “El Muecas” Robles Perez was identified by authorities as the head of the cartel kidnapping crew. The adult henchmen were described as five men and two women. They are believed to be responsible for at least eight other kidnappings where the victims were never heard from again.

The ongoing cartel violence continues to spiral out of control. Mexican authorities are scrambling to keep up with the rising levels of criminal activity. Recently the Tamaulipas government unveiled its third anti-kidnapping unit, as Breitbart Texas reported. The units are supposed to help solve the hundreds of kidnapping cases that were rarely investigated such as more than 800 cases in Reynosa alone.

Currently Tamaulipas has anti-kidnapping units in Reynosa, Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria; however their results remain to be seen.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.