Pubdate: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 Source: USA Today (US) Copyright: 1999 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. Page: 1A - Front Page Contact: 1000 Wilson Blvd., Arlington VA 22229 Fax: (703) 247-3108 Website: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nfront.htm Author: Guillermo X. Garcia, USA TODAY See: The Drug War's Killing Fields Are Exposed, a DrugSense FOCUS Alert: http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0138.html FBI SCOURS MEXICO MASS GRAVE CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- FBI agents excavating a suspected mass grave of drug cartel victims began retrieving human remains Tuesday. Armed Mexican soldiers wearing ski masks to avoid reprisals protected the site as the FBI joined Mexican officials in the painstaking exhumation of graves thought to contain at least 100 people, possibly including 22 Americans. Recovery efforts centered on two sites south of El Paso. Since an informant revealed the graves' existence five days ago, a Texas missing-persons association said it has received hundreds of calls from people who say their relatives vanished from Juarez. ''(Callers) want to know what's happened to their loved ones,'' said Jaime Hervella of the International Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons. Those related to possible victims can call an FBI hotline at 1-800-338-5856. Working at the site are 65forensic experts from an FBI team that exhumed victims of terror in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Most of the victims are believed to have come from Juarez, one of the bases of the so-called Juarez cartel that emerged as the dominant Mexican drug trafficking organization in the mid-1990s. It funneled billions of dollars' worth of cocaine, marijuana and heroin into the USA each year. President Clinton condemned the killings as ''horrible examples'' of the violence committed by Mexican drug lords. The Mexican government requested FBI assistance because of the bureau's expertise and equipment, including ground-penetrating radar, and also because several U.S. agencies have lost confidential sources in bloody killings. ''We've all got informants missing down there,'' a federal official said late Tuesday. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake