Mass grave found near Mexico town where 43 students vanished

Authorities in Mexico have uncovered a mass grave in the restive southern state of Guerrero. The burial pits are located near a town where 43 students disappeared in a deadly police shooting last week.

Deutsche Welle, 5 Oct 2014

Guerrero State Prosecutor Inaky Blanco told reporters Saturday that "pits with bone remains" had been found outside of Iguala, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Mexico City. He did not provide details on the number of bodies, or indicate whether they could be some of the students who went missing after a violent confrontation with city police.

Local and state police cordoned off the area upon the grave's discovery, in the rough terrain of a hillside community that belongs to the Iguala municipality.

"In the next few hours we will determine the cause of death and the number of bodies," said Jorge Valdez, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, adding that the bodies were being exhumed.

The 43 students vanished last week after Iguala police shot at buses they had seized to return to their teacher training college near the state capital, Chilpancingo. Three students were killed and 25 people were wounded.

Several hours later, unidentified masked gunmen fired on taxis and a bus carrying a football team on the main highway, killing three people.

Following the violence, police said that 43 students had been missing since their confrontation with the police.

Possible organized crime links

Guerrero state Governor Angel Aguirre said investigators were looking into organized criminal gang involvement, with the possibility they may have infiltrated the local government.

Blanco has said that police are being investigated for their roles in the students' disappearance.

Aguirre said earlier this week that photos showed police taking some of the students away, and 22 officers were arrested in Guerrero Sunday accused of killing two students who died in the clashes.

A lawyer for a local human rights group helping the families of the missing said before the discovery of the mass grave that relatives believed police turned the students over to a drug gang.

"The suspicion, the hypothesis, is that they are being held by organized crime gangs that operated in collusion with the police," said Vidulfo Rosales, adding students who escaped the shooting said they saw other students being put into police pickup trucks.

The United Nations has called the case "one of the most terrible events of recent times," urging Mexican authorities to carry out an "effective and diligent" search for the missing students.

Guerrero is one of the most violent states in Mexico, a country that has seen around 100,000 people killed by drug gang violence since 2007.

dr/ (AP, Reuters, AFP)