Protesters in Mexico attack government office over missing students

Protesters in Guerrero, Mexico, attacked the local prosecutor’s office in the state capital of Chilpancingo on Monday, local media said, in what could be the beginning of social unrest tied to the first anniversary this week of the disappearance of 43 students.

Local media reports said protesters arrived aboard several buses and proceeded to break windows and destroy computer equipment at the government offices, which were empty at the time.

Many protesters were reportedly from the rural teachers school of Ayotzinapa. The 43 students who were rounded up by police from the city of Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, studied there.

Mexican press showed photos of the government building with likenesses of the missing 43 students and slogans on the walls demanding their return.

The families of the missing students and others are frustrated because of a lack of clarity over what befell those who disappeared that night.

An interdisciplinary working group created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recently contradicted the federal government’s version of events, in which it was concluded that the students were killed and their bodies incinerated.

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The working group said its six-month investigation found no evidence of the fire that the Mexican attorney general’s office says incinerated the students’ bodies.

Yet last week the country’s attorney general announced that a second student had been identified in remains sent for analysis to forensic specialists in Innsbruck, Austria.

A major protest march is planned Sept. 26 in Mexico City.

Bonello is a special correspondent.

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