Mexican disappearance protests continue

Relatives and friends of the missing students accused Mexican authorities on Saturday of trying to prematurely close the case after prosecutors said gangsters in Guerrero state had admitted to incinerating bodies.

Some 300 protesting students set fire to at least seven government vehicles and threw rocks at the Guerrero state building in the city of Chilpancingo, chanting: "We want them back alive."

Thousands of people also marched in the Mexico City, with some demanding the resignation of President Enrique Pena Nieto over the case which has pointed to links between state institutions and organized crime.

Busloads of students from a teacher-training college in Ayotzinapa known for its social activism disappeared on September 26 during a police interception that left six people dead in another Guerrero town, Iguala.

Protests led last month to the standing aside of the state's governor.

Taped recordings

Prosecutors presented taped recordings on Friday in which detained gang suspects allegedly confessed to receiving the students from Iguala police, bundling them onto trucks, killing them at a landfill, and then incinerating their bodies using fuel, wood and plastics.

Parents said they would not accept the murder-incineration explanation unless independent Argentine forensic experts delivered DNA confirmation.

Meliton Ortega, an uncle of a missing student, said there was "nothing definitive" in the testimony presented by prosecutors.

"It appears that the federal government, with great irresponsibility, is interested in closing this matter," he said.

The crisis has already shortened an intended trip by President Pena Nieto to China and Australia. He was due to depart Mexico on Sunday.

Authorities have arrested 74 people, including the major of Iguala, who is alleged to have ordered police to confront the students on September 26.

Attorney General's remark goes viral

Federal Attorney General Murillo Karam said on Friday that a university laboratory in Innsbruck, Austria, would help identify the burnt remains.

An abrupt remark by Karam at the end of Friday's one-hour press conference "enough, I'm tired," prompted further outrage.

Detractors quickly adopted his remark as a rallying cry against Mexico's corruption and drug trade-related violence.

Tired of 'narco state'

Messages appeared on social networks such as "I'm tired of living in a narco state."

Filmmaker Natalia Veristain in a video said: "I'm tired of vanished Mexicans."

"I am tired of the political class that has kidnapped my country, and of the class that corrupts, that lies, that kills," she added. "I too, am tired."

September's mass student disappearance, if confirmed as mass murder, would rank it among the worst massacres in drugs-linked gang-related warfare that has killed more than 80,000 people since 2006. A further 20,000 are missing.

ipj/bw (AFP, AP, dpa)