Ayotzinapa protest demands answers on 43 missing students

Thousands of protesters marched in Mexico City on Saturday demanding answers about the 43 Ayotzinapa trainee teachers who disappeared 12 years ago.

The protest was led by parents of the missing students, who walked to the capital's main square near the government palace. Demonstrators wore red, carried symbolic coffins and counted to 43 to honour each of the students.

President Claudia Sheinbaum, who regularly meets with the families, is expected to present a report on Monday, September 28, on the latest progress in the case after a review by the attorney general's office.

The students disappeared on September 26, 2014, while travelling from Guerrero state to a protest in Mexico City. Local police stopped them in Iguala, where six people died in a street clash and 43 students later went missing.

Prosecutors initially said police handed the students to drug cartel hitmen, who killed them, burned their bodies and dumped the remains in a river. Independent human rights experts rejected that conclusion, and the case remains unsolved.

A former governor was arrested in August on accusations of deleting security videos from the Iguala crime scene. The former state attorney general was arrested in 2022.

More than 134,000 people are listed as disappeared in Mexico.