Suspects admit to killing missing Mexican students
Gang suspects have confessed to killing 43 missing Mexican students, burning their bodies for 14 hours and tossing their charcoal-like remains in a river, authorities said, in a case causing national revulsion. The students had vanished after gang-linked police attacked their buses in the city of Iguala on September 26.
MEXICO CITY: Gang suspects have confessed to killing 43 missing Mexican students, burning their bodies for 14 hours and tossing their charcoal-like remains in a river, authorities said, in a case causing national revulsion.
Facing angry protests in the biggest crisis of his administration, President Enrique Pena Nieto vowed to hunt down all those responsible for the “horrible crime.”
Authorities have been searching for the aspiring teachers since gang-linked police attacked their buses in the southern city of Iguala on September 26, allegedly under orders of the mayor and his wife in a night of terror that left six people dead.
If the confessions are proven true, the mass murder would rank among the worst massacres in a drug war that has killed more than 80,000 people and left 22,000 others missing since 2006.
“To the parents of the missing young men and society as a whole, I assure you that we won’t stop until justice is served,” said.
Attor ney General Jesus Murillo Karam stopped short of declaring the 43 dead and said an Austrian university would help identify the remains. He said authorities will continue to consider the students as missing until DNA tests confirm the identities.
Three Guerreros Unidos gang members confessed to killing the male students after police handed them over between Iguala and the neighbouring town of Cocula, Murillo Karam said, showing videos of the taped confessions.
The bodies were set on fire down a hill from a Cocula garbage dump with gasoline, tires, firewood and plastic, in a 14-hour-long inferno, he said. The suspects then crushed the remains, stuffed them in bags and threw some in a river.