Acapulco, Mexico: Mexican authorities have found at least 17 bodies rotting at the bottom of a 500-meter-deep (1,650-foot) ravine in the violent southern state of Guerrero, a federal official said Tuesday.

"There were nine complete bodies and eight half-burned," the official from the attorney general's office said on condition of anonymity, adding that they were found between December 8 and 11 in the village of Chichihualco.

The bodies were discovered following an anonymous tip. 

The identities of the corpses, their ages and gender are unknown. Officials also do not know how long ago they died.

The bodies were hidden behind rocks and bushes at the bottom of the gully, according to Mexican media.

Across the region, clandestine graves are often found with one or several bodies inside, but this was a particularly grisly find.

A member of an organization of relatives of missing people in Guerrero, Isabel Rosales, said the corpses were sent to Mexico City to be identified.

Rosales said members of the Committee of Relatives and Friends of Kidnapped, Missing and Murdered People of Guerrero asked the attorney general's office to take their DNA samples to match them with the newly found remains.

The committee, founded in 2007, has 45 cases of missing people in the four main cities of Guerrero, including the Pacific resort of Acapulco and the state capital Chilpancingo.

The residents of Chichihualco are known for their production of handmade footballs but their community is in the middle of one of Mexico's most dangerous regions.

The state of Guerrero has suffered years of drug cartel violence as gangs grow opium poppies in remote mountains and battle for control of heroin trafficking routes.

It is in Guerrero that 43 trainee teachers were abducted by corrupt police in the city of Iguala in September 2014 and, according to prosecutors, handed over to a gang that killed them and incinerated their bodies.

The case shed light on the plight of Mexico's disappeared amid drug cartel violence that has left some 26,000 people missing and tens of thousands more dead.

The Chichihualco investigation is led by a newly created division in the attorney general's office specializing in the search for missing people.

Hundreds of people have gone missing in Guerrero alone. 

Last week, the government deployed 200 federal forces in a subregion straddling Guerrero and Michoacan states known as Tierra Caliente (Hot Land).

The mayor of the town of Apaxtla, some 250 kilometers (150 miles) from Chichihualco, said on Tuesday that seven men were kidnapped last week.

Gunmen dressed in fake military gear and armed with assault rifles intercepted a public transport van and grabbed five men. Later, they tried to kidnap four other people, though two escaped.

Drug gangs often "take some people to incorporate them in their criminal group," Mayor Salvador Martinez told Radio Formula.