Suspected gang members in Mexico have confessed to killing more than 40 missing students and incinerating their remains in a case that has shocked the country, the country's attorney general has said.
For weeks, authorities have been searching for the students since police attacked their buses in the southern city of Iguala in late September, allegedly under orders of former mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda.
The three Guerreros Unidos gang suspects, named by Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam as Patricio Landa, Jhonatan Gomez and Agustin Reyes, said the students were killed after they were handed over to them.
The suspects, who confessed while being questioned by police, said they burnt the bodies before crushing the remains of the victims and stuffing them into bags and tossing them in a river.
Mexico's government is still waiting for DNA confirmation to establish the identity of those killed, with the Mr Karam warned that it would be difficult to identify the charred remains.
'I am angry, sad and Mexican society is too,' he said as he delivered the news in a meeting with relatives. He showed videotaped confessions by the suspects, who said they built a funeral pyre of tyres, wood and fuel along the River San Juan in Cocula, a town near Iguala.
The government estimates 22,322 people have disappeared since the start of the country's drug war in late 2006.
The 43 students have received far more attention than other disappeared, in part because allegedly corrupt police in Iguala were thought to have played a role in their disappearance.
A billboard with the photographs of the 43 missing students in Tixtla (Reuters)
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Mexico City on Wednesday to demand the safe return of the missing students after authorities arrested Abarca and Pineda over their disappearance.
The two, dubbed 'The Imperial Couple', have ties to a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, according to Mexican authorities and were arrested on Tuesday after being on the run for more than a month.
Entities 0 Name: Mexico Count: 2 1 Name: Guerreros Unidos Count: 2 2 Name: Iguala Count: 2 3 Name: Patricio Landa Count: 1 4 Name: Mexican Count: 1 5 Name: María de los Ángeles Pineda Count: 1 6 Name: Pineda Count: 1 7 Name: Tixtla Count: 1 8 Name: Jhonatan Gomez Count: 1 9 Name: Karam Count: 1 10 Name: Jesus Murillo Karam Count: 1 11 Name: Reuters Count: 1 12 Name: José Luis Abarca Count: 1 13 Name: Agustin Reyes Count: 1 14 Name: River San Juan Count: 1 15 Name: Mexico City Count: 1 16 Name: Cocula Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1uGk1xL Title: Slain Mexican student's friends, family demand justice Description: Forty-three students remain missing after armed men ambushed buses carrying students in southern Mexico on on September 26 .The Mexican state of Guerrero posted images and offered a reward of 1 million pesos ($74,000) for information leading to the missing students. Images of three missing students were not available.
