8 Bodies Found in Clandestine Grave in Mexico, Fear Its Missing Student-Teachers

At least eight bodies were found in clandestine graves discovered on the weekend in the southern Mexican city of Iguala, officials with the Guerrero state government confirmed to Efe on Sunday.

A state government spokesman said that eight bodies had been found by Saturday evening, “but we don’t know if they belong to (some of) the 43 young (teacher trainees)” who disappeared last weekend after attacks on students that killed six and wounded 25.

Regarding the versions broadcast by media outlets that the bodies were burned, the official said that he did not know the condition of the remains adding that the investigation will continue near a hill in the village of Pueblo Viejo, where the graves were found thanks to information provided by several people under arrest.

Federal prosecutors have taken over the investigation of the disappearance of the 43 teacher trainees in Iguala, the Attorney General’s Office said in an announcement made on Saturday just hours after initial reports came out that clandestine graves had been found.

Forensic experts are in Guerrero to examine the remains found in the mass graves, Criminal Investigations Agency director Tomas Zeron said.

“A group of investigators and federal Attorney General’s Office agents” will be overseeing the investigation, Zeron said.

Relatives of the 43 missing students called Saturday for a nationwide march to protest the slow pace of the investigation and demand that authorities locate their loved ones.

In a gathering with the media at the teacher training college in the rural community of Ayotzinapa, where the young people were studying, the families said they would march on Wednesday to demand that investigators determine what happened on the night of Sept. 26-27.

The students went missing after a night of violence in Iguala – a city in the crime-plagued state of Guerrero – in which six people were killed, including three students of the training college for future primary-school instructors, and 25 others were injured.

The murky series of events included an attack on a bus carrying members of a Third-Division soccer team.

Twenty-two municipal police officers suspected of firing at the students for reasons yet unknown have been arrested, although the involvement of organized crime elements has not been ruled out.

Some witnesses said the 43 missing students were shoved into police vans by the same officers who had attacked them. The students came under fire from the police while riding in private buses they had illegally taken to return to their homes after a fundraising drive.

Published in Latino Daily News