Mexico Student Massacre: 28 Bodies Of 43 Missing Found In Mass Grave

Over a week ago, gunmen started shooting at buses in in Iguala, Mexico — buses carrying students and members of the third division Chilpancingo Hornets soccer club. "We were just watching a movie and we saw the bullets come in and then it was like we were going off a cliff and the bus tipped over," said Omar Sanchez about the violence to CNN en Español. "And it was then that they started firing at us with machine guns," he said. "It sounded so ugly, the gunshots and my teammates screaming, 'Help, leave us alone, we are injured.' A teacher said, 'you have already blinded me, please, we are the team from Chilpancingo."

Until recently, authorities did not know where the students went after the shoot outs in Mexico's Guerrero state on Sept. 26. On Saturday, officials uncovered unmarked graves with human remains of at least 28 individuals after two suspects in custody tipped off authorities. According to CNN, Guerrero State Attorney General Iñaky Blanco Cabrera told reporters that the bodies were burned and then buried, making the identification process time consuming and difficult.

The students — who were mostly young men studying to become teachers at Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa — were protesting unfair hiring practices of teachers on Sept. 26 when they were rounded up by the hitmen, taken to the mass grave site on a hill in Pueblo Viejo and killed. "A bed of branches and tree trunks was made, on which the bodies of the victims were laid and a flammable substance was used," Inaky Blanco, the chief prosecutor of violence-plagued Guerrero state, said.

Family of the missing students have provided DNA samples to match the remains with the students. Parents of the missing children are protesting and holding out hope that their children may be alive. "As parents, we reject this situation. It's not the youngsters. We know they're holding them alive," said Manuel Martinez, whose son is among the missing, to AFP.