The Borneo Post

Protesters set fire to two patrol cars in southern Mexico

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CITY: Demonstrat­ors set fire to two patrol vehicles in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero on Saturday during protests over the recent death of a student at the hands of police.

The vehicles were burned on a highway in the municipali­ty of Tixtla, about 20 kilometres from the state capital of Chilpancin­go, an AFP journalist saw.

Local media reported that the vehicles belonged to the National Guard, and that protesters had detained the occupants for a time.

The protests began after one student from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college was shot to death and another wounded in a confrontat­ion with police in Guerrero on Thursday.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador previously said the pair were traveling in a stolen car when police ordered them to stop, and that the men in the car had opened fire first.

According to the Guerrero public security secretaria­t, a firearm was found in the vehicle.

Some, however, have rejected the official version of events, and students from Ayotzinapa went to demonstrat­e in Chilpancin­go after the incident, allegedly setting fire to at least one vehicle.

The shooting is under investigat­ion by the attorney general and state prosecutor’s offices.

It took place against a backdrop of flaring tensions over the case of 43 students from the same college who went missing nearly a decade ago.

The day before the shooting, protesters smashed open a door to Mexico’s presidenti­al palace demanding to meet Lopez Obrador to discuss the case.

The 43 students had been traveling to a demonstrat­ion in Mexico City when investigat­ors believe they were kidnapped by a drug cartel in collusion with corrupt police.

The exact circumstan­ces of their disappeara­nce are still unknown, but a truth commission set up by the government has branded the case a ‘state crime’, saying the military shared responsibi­lity, either directly or through negligence.

 ?? — AFP photo ?? A firefighte­r puts out a car fire after alleged alleged students of the ‘Isidro Burgos’ Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa stole and set the pick-up truck in flames, in Chilpancin­go, State of Guerrero, Mexico.
— AFP photo A firefighte­r puts out a car fire after alleged alleged students of the ‘Isidro Burgos’ Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa stole and set the pick-up truck in flames, in Chilpancin­go, State of Guerrero, Mexico.

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