Missing Mexico students not among 28 in mass grave

15 October 2014 - 01H25

by Enrique Krause and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and France24

• inShare

A journalist stands near a mass grave that was excavated by forensic personnel in Iguala, Guerrero state, Mexico on October 13, 2014

DNA results show that 28 bodies found in a mass grave in southern Mexico are not those of a group of missing students, the country's attorney general said Tuesday.
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam also said that 14 more local police officers were detained in the case and accused of handing the 43 students over to the Guerreros Unidos gang.
Authorities have found several clandestine graves outside the city of Iguala since the students disappeared after an attack by the gang-connected municipal police, raising fears about their fate.
The first mass grave had five pits containing 28 charred bodies but authorities have not said how many were found in others last week. Another mass grave was found on Tuesday.
"We have some (DNA) results for the first pits and I can tell you that they do not correspond to the DNA that relatives of these young men have given us," Murillo Karam told a news conference.
Officials have detained 26 Iguala police officers in the case along with eight other people, including four Guerreros Unidos members.
The attorney general announced Tuesday that 14 officers from the neighboring town of Cocula were detained.
The officers, he said, took the 43 students from their Iguala colleagues and "then handed them in the city limits of Iguala and Cocula" to the Guerreros Unidos.
A Cocula police administrator was also detained for changing the numbers of the town's patrol cars to hide their role in the students' disappearance.