Mexico declares missing university students dead

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- The 43 university students reported missing in September after clashes with police in Guerrero state have now been officially declared dead, Mexico's attorney general announced Tuesday.

After an "exhaustive, serious" investigation, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said, "the evidence allows us to determine that the students were kidnapped, killed, burned and thrown into the river."

Authorities have arrested nearly 100 people and obtained 39 confessions in connection with the Sept. 26 attack, which occurred as students from Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa attempted to leave the town of Iguala aboard three commercial buses they had earlier commandeered -- a common practice among students of the school and largely tolerated. Police blocked the buses and then opened fire. A number of students were taken away by the police and 43 were ultimately reported missing.

Jose Luis Abarca, the mayor of Iguala, was among those arrested. According to authorities, Abarca ordered the local police to detain the students and to turn them over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang.

One of the gang leaders, Felipe Rodriguez Salgado -- also known as El Cepillo -- told investigators the gang killed the students believing they were members of Los Rojos, a rival gang.

The official announcement was met with resistance. Families of the 43 students have been frustrated by the government's delayed response to the students' disappearance and skeptical of the government's account of the incident. Some assert that the army was complicit in the students' disappearance, an accusation the attorney general dismissed as lacking "a shred of evidence."

"We don't believe anything of what they say," said parent Carmen Cruz, whose 19-year-old son Jorge is among the 43 now declared dead. "We are not going to allow this case to be closed."

Vidulfo Rosales, an attorney representing the families, is pushing to keep the investigation open.

The government, however, has signaled it is time to move forward.

"We can't be stuck here," Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Tuesday ahead of the attorney general's press conference. "We have to give it attention. There has to be justice. There has to be punishment for those who were responsible for these regrettable acts, but we have to take the course of continuing to assure that Mexico has a better future."