12 people kidnapped in Mexico’s Guerrero

At least 12 people have been reportedly abducted in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero as the country’s attorney general declares dead all the 43 students who disappeared in the same municipality in September last year.

The people were kidnapped in the town of Cocula, a state prosecutor’s spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday.

Another government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as well, said the kidnapper initially took 19 people and then released eight of them.

The two officials’ insistence on being reported on condition of anonymity was due to the fact that no official government statement has been released on the case so far.

According to the second official, there were some miners working for Media Luna, a Canadian-owned gold mining project in Cocula, among the detainees.

The owner of the mine, however, rejected the reports that the miners have been abducted.

The government official further noted that the kidnappers were clad in police or military uniforms.

Cocula is located near the southern city of Iguala, where the students went missing first.

On September 26, 2014, the student teachers disappeared in Iguala following an attack by police forces suspected of having links to a drug gang. The incident took place during a protest over teachers’ rights.

The gang members have told investigators that the students had been taken to a landfill, where they were killed and burned.

The Mexican judiciary has so far filed arrest warrants for 45 people, including Iguala’s former mayor, on charges of kidnapping the missing students.

Mexico’s attorney general, Jesus Murillo Karam, said on January 27 that the 43 students are dead, arguing that his team had interviewed 99 individuals, including members of a criminal gang thought to have murdered the students.

The parents of the victims, however, reacted angrily to Murillo’s announcement, saying that without proof, they would continue to believe their children were still alive.

IA/HSN/HMV

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk