Mexico rescues 34 Central Americans from home in violent Tamaulipas state

Mexican authorities said on Wednesday that military personnel rescued 34 Central Americans from a home in the violent northeastern state of Tamaulipas, but said no arrests were made because the people who were watching over the migrants fled.

The eight Guatemalans, 25 Hondurans and one El Salvadoran who were rescued, are likely not the same group of people as the 22 passengers kidnapped by armed men from a bus in northern Mexico last week, a spokeswoman for the state of Tamaulipas said.

"Military personnel rescued 34 people of Central American nationality, of which 19 are adults and 15 minors ... At the same address 4 vehicles, 3 high-caliber weapons, magazines and cartridges were found," state authorities said in a statement.

Tamaulipas has for years suffered high levels of murders and disappearances amid clashes between violent criminal gangs.

In August 2010, 72 undocumented migrants from Central and South America were murdered by the Zetas gang at a ranch in Tamaulipas. A year later, nearly 200 corpses, many of them Mexican, were found in mass graves in the area.