Remains belonging to one of Mexico’s missing students identified

Tests have identified the remains of one of 43 students abducted 10 weeks ago in southwestern Mexico, the country’s attorney general said Saturday, confirming a feared massacre the government has blamed on gang members.

Tests in Austria identified a piece of bone found at a garbage dump in Guerrero state as belonging to Alexander Mora Venancio, one of the disappeared students. His family has been informed.

"Today Argentine specialists confirmed to my father that the remains were me," said a post on the Facebook page of the teachers college that the students attended, written in the voice of Mora.

The 43 students from the town of Ayotzinapa, went missing after they clashed with police in Iguala in southwestern Guerrero on Sept. 26. They had descended on the town to solicit donations and protest proposed government education reforms.

The government previously said the students were abducted by corrupt police and handed over to the drug gang Guerreros Unidos. They were murdered and incinerated, with their remains thrown into a garbage dump and a river, according to gang member confessions.

"Now we know that these are our children," Nardo Flores, the father of another of the missing students, told Reuters. "All we can hope now is that justice is done and that the government punishes those responsible."

The apparent massacre shone a spotlight on the nexus between impunity, corruption and drug gangs that has blighted Mexico for years. It has spurred widespread and sometimes violent protests throughout the country, where more than 100,000 people have been killed in gang-related violence since 2007.

Thousands marched in Mexico City on Saturday evening, chanting "Out, Peña," in reference to President Enrique Peña Nieto, and "They were taken alive. We want them alive."

"If these disappearances and executions have grown over the years, it is because the authorities have permitted this to happen," said Itzel Silva, a human rights lawyer. "People are fed up with impunity."

The case of the missing students has put pressure on Peña Nieto, who is also grappling with a weaker-than-expected economy and the fallout from a conflict-of-interest scandal, overshadowing his efforts to focus attention on a major economic reform drive.

Wire services