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Authorities Find Four New Mass Graves In Mexico

A woman wears a black veil and carries a cross reading in Spanish "Assassin State," as thousands march down one of the capital's main boulevards to demand that the government find the 43 students who disappeared in southern Guerrero State.
Rebecca Blackwell
/
AP
A woman wears a black veil and carries a cross reading in Spanish "Assassin State," as thousands march down one of the capital's main boulevards to demand that the government find the 43 students who disappeared in southern Guerrero State.

Mexican authorities say that they have found four more mass graves near the site in Iguala, Guerrero, where 43 students went missing in September.

The Mexican newspaper El Universal reports that Jesús Murillo Karam, with the attorney general's office, said that they arrested four people, who led them to the graves.

Of course, the big question here is whether the bodies that have so far been found in the five other graves discovered earlier, belong to the college students. Authorities say they are still working to identify them.

BBC Mundo reports that the bodies inside the new mass graves were also incinerated. Their correspondent in Mexico, Juan Carlos Pérez Salazar, says the graves are about a 20-minute walking distance from the ones found previously.

As we've reported, the students were last seen being arrested by police, who had previously killed six students who had hijacked buses in a protest. Authorities have arrested more than 30 people, including almost two dozen police officers connected to the disappearances.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.