Gang members admit to killing, burning 40 missing Mexico students

Suspected gang members in Mexico confessed to killing more than 40 missing students and incinerating their remains in a grisly case that shocked the country and triggered angry protests, authorities said Friday. Facing 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 43 students 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 violence that left six people dead. If the testimonies are proven true, it would be one of 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.

Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam warned that it would be difficult to identify the charred remains and that authorities will continue to consider the students as missing until DNA tests confirm the identities. The three Guerreros Unidos gang suspects said they killed the male students after they were handed over to them between Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula by police. The bodies were set on fire near a Cocula landfill with gasoline, tires, firewood and plastic in an inferno that lasted 14 hours. The suspects then crushed the remains, stuffed them in bags and threw some of them in a river. The suspects were not sure how many students they received but one of them said there were more than 40.

The fire lasted from midnight to 2:00 pm the next day. The criminals could not handle the bodies until 5:00 pm due to the heat.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam

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