Mexican protestors clash with police over student deaths

Protestors against the Mexican government’s handling of the disappearance of 43 student teachers have clashed with riot police in Acapulco.

Thousands of people took to the streets to protest, with a group of masked protestors clashing with riot police after they had blocked the protestors’ access to the city’s airport. The clashes left 16 police officers injured, a public security official said. There was no comment on the number of injured protestors.

Several protestors were armed with machetes, large sticks and metal pipes in the latest demonstration over the missing students.

Authorities say that police in Iguala shot at buses carrying the student teachers on September 26, handed them over to police officers in the neighbouring town of Cocula, who then handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang. Some Mexican officials have said that Iguala’s then-mayor Jose Luis Abarca had ordered the officers to attack the students out of fear that they might derail a speech by his wife, who used to be the head of the town’s child protection agency.

Abarca and his wife fled but were arrested in Mexico City earlier in November.    

A number of peaceful protests had already been held to demonstrate against the students’ disappearance.

However, protests started to turn violent after Mexican attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam announced on Friday that gang suspects had admitted to killing the students, burning their remains and tossing them in a river after receiving them from the police. Karam said that most of the remains are too charred for any investigations to be carried out on them and that only two of bones are salvageable for DNA.