Caracas, Mar 16 (EFE).– Venezuelan security forces are continuing to search for more missing persons after 17 bodies were found earlier this week at an illegal gold mine in southeastern Venezuela.

National ombudsman Tareck William Saab, the head of a commission named by President Nicolas Maduro to investigate the disappearances, told reporters Tuesday that the bodies had been discovered in a mass grave at the Nuevo Callao mine, located in a remote area of Bolivar state.

Meanwhile, government opponents in Congress are looking to question Bolivar Gov. Francisco Rangel over his initial denial of allegations by the relatives of 28 miners who said their loved ones had gone missing.

Saab said Tuesday that the bodies of 17 individuals found in a five-meter-deep (16-foot-deep) grave were killed by gunfire.

“We’re not ruling out that another mass grave could be found … and that’s why the search is continuing, not in the Nuevo Callao mine anymore, but in another place,” he said.

Between three and six of the bodies correspond to a group of 28 miners from the city of Tumeremo who were reported missing by their family members on March 4, according to Saab, who added that two of the bodies were women.

Saab said authorities were using information provided by the relatives of the missing to identify the remains.

For his part, opposition lawmaker Americo De Grazia said Tuesday that Venezuela’s unicameral legislature would question Rangel, a member of the ruling, socialist PSUV party, over his initial statements dismissing the allegations by the miners’ relatives.

Authorities say an Ecuadorian-born suspect, Jamilton Ulloa Suarez, is the leader of the gang that carried out the killings, and on Monday Attorney General Luisa Ortega announced the arrest of one of his alleged deputies, a woman identified as Rosa Saida Gil Salazar.

Investigators also are searching for a suspect known as “Miguelito,” who witnesses say shot the missing miners.

Saab said Monday in announcing the discovery of 14 bodies at the Nuevo Callao mine that the motive of the killings was “territorial control of an area very rich in gold, in diamonds, in minerals.” EFE