Authorities in the Mexican city of Guadalajara have resorted to storing corpses in a refrigerated trailer as the country’s spiraling drug war fills up its morgues, but residents are outraged as the stench of bodies permeates their neighborhoods.
As many as 157 corpses are being stored in a mobile morgue that has been bouncing around the city’s suburbs for more than a week, the BBC reports.
Authorities in the western state of Jalisco, where Guadalajara is located, are scrambling to find a storage solution because Mexican law prohibits cremating corpses associated with violent crimes.
Luis Octavio Cotero, the former chief of Jalisco’s forensic unit, said officials “ran out of cemetery plots where we could bury them,” according to the BBC.
State officials ultimately hope to establish a temporary cemetery to hold up to 800 unclaimed bodies, the Associated Press reports.
Residents have complained about the stench emanating from the trailer, which was relocated from a suburban warehouse..