More than 60,000 people have been reported missing in Mexico since the start of the country's drug war in 2006, a mark far higher than previously reported, according to Mexico's National Search Commission.

Karla Quintana, head of the National Registry of Missing or Missing Persons (RNPED), said women represent 25.7% of the 61,637 missing. In June, the total estimate of people who had disappeared was 40,000.

"We have to remember we're talking here about lives and families and people who are still missing," Quintana said during a news conference Monday in Mexico City. "These are statistics of horror behind which lie so many stories of such great pain."

The figures come less than two months after Mexico's Secretary General of National Public Safety said the country's homicide rate was on pace to reach highest overall annual total since 1997 when the government started tracking those figures.

There had been 29,414 homicides in 2019 through Nov. 22, or 100 killings per day, up from 28,869 over the same period last year.

June was the deadliest month in Mexico last year, with 3,076 murders, an average of about 102 per day.

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