Human rights groups in Mexico say that 10,000 migrants have been kidnapped over the past six months [Reuters]

Mexican troops have rescued 47 migrants - of whom 44 are Guatemalan and three Mexican - from a safehouse in Reynosa, a city in the northern state of Tamaulipas, according to the army.

Troops found the house on Tuesday after spotting two vehicles containing four suitcases with 108 packages of cocaine weighing about 100kg while patrolling a neighbourhood, the army said in a written statement on Tuesday.

The drugs are valued at an estimated $3.8 million. No arrests were made during the operation, the statement said.

Separately, Mexican authorities said they are investigating the disappearance of three relatives of a human-rights activist who was assassinated last year in the Juarez valley along the US border
with Texas.

In December last year, armed men kidnapped about 50 Central American migrants in southern Mexico after holding up the cargo train they were riding on.

In August also last year, armed men believed to be from the Zetas drug gang kidnapped and killed 72 migrants at a ranch near the US border.

The victims were blindfolded and bound before being lined up against a wall and gunned down, authorities said.

Countless Latin American migrants journey some 3,000km through Mexico hoping for a better life in
the USates, some clinging to the top of cargo trains or hiding in secret compartments built into tractor trailers.

Some migrants pay as much as $10,000 to smugglers who promise to get them into the US. Many others see their journeys end in robbery, assault or arrest.

Women often report rapes during the voyage, and some have been forced into prostitution.