35 abductees found in northeastern Mexico

CELAYA, Mexico: Mexican authorities said on Friday they had found 35 people who had been held hostage in the northeastern state of San Luis Potosi.

The captives were found in a desert in the region of Matehuala, where they had been reported missing, regional authorities said. The group had been guarded by armed men in five vans, authorities said.

But the captors fled in two of the vans and abandoned the abductees after security forces arrived, state spokesman Miguel Angel Gallegos told a local television station. There is “a good chance” that among those who left in the vehicles “there are people who had remained unaccounted for,” he added.