“Preliminarily we have 381 bodies that were deposited irregularly in the crematorium, which were not cremated,” Eloy Garcia, communications coordinator of the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office, told AFP.

Garcia said the corpses were “stacked” in no apparent order in various rooms of the building where the crematorium operates.

They were “just thrown like that, indiscriminately, one on top of the other, on the floor,” he said.

All the bodies had been embalmed.

Instead of ashes, relatives were given “other material,” Garcia said.

Authorities estimated that some of the remains could have been there for up to two years.

Garcia blamed the “carelessness and irresponsibility” of the crematorium owners, adding that all such businesses “know what their daily cremation capacity is.”

“You can’t take in more than you can process,” he said.

One of the administrators of the crematorium had already turned himself in to prosecutors.

Authorities did not specify whether the corpses belonged to victims of criminal violence.

Mexico, a country hard hit by organised crime, has been suffering for years from a crisis in its forensic system, saturated by the high number of bodies to be processed, the lack of personnel and budgetary restrictions.