Nineteen bodies have been found outside a village in the Mexican state of Guerrero, according to BBC.

The police are expected to compare the said remains with DNA samples from over 600 families who are searching for missing relatives in the state. Last year, the disappearance of 43 students in Guerrero had drawn attention to one of Mexico's most violent states, where thousands of people have gone missing in the past years.

The officials were said to have been given an anonymous tip leading them to the bodies, which were dumped at the bottom of a 1,640 foot narrow canyon in Chichihualco. Of the nineteen found, eight of the bodies have been burned.

This is not the first mass grave found in Guerrero. Since September 2014, scores of them have been found around the state, when the 43 students from Iguala went missing. However, in the search for the said students, only one of the mass graves -- a rubbish dump outside of Cocula, contained remains, while most of the others have yet to be established.

While families of the students are still clinging to hope that their loved ones could still be alive, The Daily Mail noted that the location and time frame (The New York Times reported that the bodies appeared to have been dumped between a month and 18 months) of the mass grave in Chichihualco would suggest that the bodies may not be that of the students, as the mountainous area has been dominated by drug gangs and local farmers who grow opium poppies. The New York Post also added that in Guerrero, more than a dozen drug gangs are fighting for the control of poppy production and other criminal enterprises.

The bodies are suspected to be members of the said gangs, although no immediate information on age and gender have been been released, or which gangs may have been involved in the killings.

Despite the fact that the recently discovered mass grave may not include the remains of the 43 missing students, it has been noted that just this October, the investigation was reopened when an international panel of experts said that the initial investigation was flawed.

Officially, the government said that the students were seized by corrupt municipal police officers who handed them over to members of a local gang. The gang was said to have "mistook the students for members of one of their rivals, killed them, and burned their bodies in a dump before throwing their ashes into a stream". The panel of experts concluded that the government's account was physically impossible and came up with a list of recommendations that the government has agreed to abide by, including the relaunching of the search for the missing students.