Mexican authorities have reportedly found three bodies in their search for the Australian brothers who went missing this week.
Perth brothers Callum and Jake Robinson had been on a surfing and camping trip in the Baja California region of Mexico, near Ensenada when they vanished.
Their family and friends took to social media in a desperate plea for information that could help track them down after they failed to make it to their holiday accommodation in Rosarito.
The pair were travelling with an American citizen, Jack Carter Rhoad, who is also missing.
Mexican authorities early on Saturday Australian time were reported as saying three bodies had been in La Bocana, about 200km south of San Diego.
Reuters cited two sources with knowledge of the investigation as confirming the find.
Authorities have not confirmed whether the bodies are those belonging to the three missing men.
On Friday, Baja California Attorney General María Elena Andrade Ramírez told reporters that three Mexican people — a woman and two men — had been arrested in connection to their disappearance.
Ms Ramírez said authorities were concentrating on three abandoned tents south of the Ensenada region where the boys were believed to be staying before they disappeared.
But she said the chances of finding the men had been diminished because authorities were not alerted quickly enough.
“Unfortunately, a notice of their disappearance was only filed in the last few days, so very important hours were lost there,” she told a press conference in Mexico on Friday.
Local media has reported that blood was discovered at the tent site and a truck believed to belong to one of the brothers has been found burnt out at a nearby farm.
The search for the West Australians and their American friend — who are all aged in their 30s — has been focused around San Juan de las Pulgas and Punta San Jose, in Baja California.
Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been providing assistance to the family.
The department has urged people to exercise a high degree of caution when travelling to Baja California “due to the threat of violent crime”.
Drug cartels are known to operate in the region and the state’s chief prosecutor said “all lines of investigation” remained open.
In 2015, West Australian surfers Adam Coleman and Dean Lucas were murdered, believed to have been shot by gang members in the neighbouring Sinaloa region, before their van and bodies were burnt.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, as well as opposition foreign spokesman Simon Birmingham and WA Premier Roger Cook, expressed their concerns for the surfers’ safety and wishes for their safe return.