MEXICO CITY – Mexican students wearing masks hurled objects at the headquarters of the federal Attorney General’s office in Mexico City in a protest against the disappearance of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero.
The protesters, most of them from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, began a march at the campus which ended late Wednesday in front of the Attorney General’s office, where they held a rally.
The protest turned violent when the students hurled blankets on fire, sticks, stones and other objects at the building, breaking glass on the façade.
The students carried banners with slogans like “they took them alive, we want them back alive,” and had placed the pictures of the missing students on blankets.
The 43 students of a teachers training college went missing after municipal police in Iguala, a city in the southern state of Guerrero, fired shots at a group of students who had commandeered a bus on September 26, in a night of violence that left six dead, including three of the youths. Twenty-five others were wounded.
The missing students were last seen being forced into police vans.
Federal prosecutors took over the investigation two weeks ago, but the students have not been found.
Twenty-eight bodies found recently in five clandestine graves near Iguala were not those of any of the missing students, the Attorney General’s office said.
It also said members of criminal groups were involved in the disappearances and announced the arrest of more than 50 people, including several police agents and alleged members of the Guerrero Unidos gang.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto Wednesday said new lines of investigation have been opened and he hoped that it would help find the missing students.