WARNING: This story contains graphic details. Discretion is advised.
Three gang members have confessed to murdering a group of 43 students missing since late September, Mexico’s Attorney General said Friday.
Reuters reported Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the three suspects burned the students’ bodies at a garbage dump near the city of Iguala, about 193 kilometres south of Mexico City.
Some of the students were still alive when they were set ablaze, the suspects reportedly admitted.
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Murillo Karam showed videotaped confessions and footage of the charred remains of what are believed to be the missing students.
The suspects used fuel, tires and wood to burn the bodies of the students in a fire that lasted about 14 hours, according to Karam.
The remains were put into bags and tossed into river, according to AFP.
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Murillo Karam said the students will be considered missing until DNA tests confirm the identities of their remains.
Mexican authorities told relatives of the missing college students earlier Friday that they had found six bags of unidentified human remains on the river bank, but weren’t sure whether they were of the children, said Manuel Martinez, a spokesman for the families and guardian of two of the missing.
“The meeting with the attorney general was tense, because we don’t believe them anymore,” Martinez said.
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The students, all from a teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, near Iguala, disappeared Sept. 26 following a police confrontation that led to six deaths.
Authorities said Iguala’s mayor sent police to intercept the students, who came to town to collect money and had commandeered buses.
Earlier this week, authorities arrested the now-former mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda.
The couple had been on the run amid accusations Abarca ordered police to confront the students ahead of his wife’s public appearance later that day.
Police, allegedly at the mayor’s order, reportedly fired on buses the students were travelling in. Three students died, while three people travelling in other vehicles hit by gunfire were also killed.
The 43 students were herded into police vehicles and taken away.
Murillo Karam said the police then passed the students on to members of a drug gang called Guerreros Uniods — a gang reportedly linked to Abarca and Angeles Pineda.
With files from The Associated Press
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