SAN FERNANDO, Mexico — Two cars exploded early Friday, in front of the offices of a major Mexican television station and a transit police station, in a northern state where officials are investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants.

There were no injuries in either explosion, though both caused some damage to buildings and knocked out the signal of the Televisa network for several hours in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the drug gang-plagued state of Tamaulipas. The explosion outside Televisa was felt for several blocks.

Soldiers were blocking access to the building, Televisa said. The network described the explosion as a car bomb, but an official with the state attorney general's office couldn't confirm the type of explosions, just that two cars caught fire and blew up. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the incidents.

If confirmed, it would mean a total of four car bombs in Mexico this year — a new and frightening tactic in the country's escalating drug war.

The first exploded July 5 in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing a federal police officer and two other people. The second, which caused no injuries, happened just two weeks ago in front of police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria.

Authorities are investigating the disappearance of two law-enforcement officials in San Fernando, where the bodies were found: a prosecutor and a transit police supervisor, the state official said. Neither was involved in the massacre investigation, the official said, adding that it is still unclear how long they have been missing. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the case.

Just north of Ciudad Victoria, heavily guarded investigators worked to identify 72 migrants massacred near the U.S. border, while human rights advocates demanded Mexico do more to stop the exploitation and abuse of migrants that they say led to the heinous crime.

Marines are protecting the pink, one-story funeral home where the bodies were taken after being discovered on a ranch Tuesday, bound, blindfolded and slumped against a wall.

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Tamaulipas state Assistant Attorney General Jesus de la Garza said Thursday that 15 bodies had been identified: eight from Honduras, four from El Salvador, two from Guatemala and one from Brazil. Diplomats from several of those nations traveled to Mexico to help identify them, and Mexico's National Human Rights Commission sent investigators to monitor the process.

The government's chief security spokesman said the migrants were apparently slain because they refused to help a gang smuggle drugs.

"The information we have at this moment is that it was an attempt at forced recruitment," Alejandro Poire told W radio. "It wasn't a kidnapping with the intent to get money, but the intention was to hold these people, force them to participate in organized crime — with the terrible outcome that we know."

The victims of what could be Mexico's biggest drug-gang massacre were traversing some of the nation's most dangerous territory, trying to reach Texas. The lone survivor said the assassins identified themselves as Zetas, a drug gang that dominates parts of the northern state of Tamaulipas.

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