Mexico Students Deaths - For the very first time, the Mexican authorities have officially declared the 43 missing college students dead and were reported to be murdered. The Independent UK revealed the students were seized by the Mexican police and handed over to a drug mob, who killed them and burned their bodies at a rubbish dump.

The deaths of the 43 missing students who went missing in Mexico's southern state of Guerero in September have stunned the whole world. The case sparked a global outcry after security forces, the army and a mayor were allegedly involved in the killings. The authorities handling the investigation said a drug gang had mistaken the students to be members of a rival cartel.

During a press conference on Tuesday in Mexico City, Attorney General Jesus Murillo said the case of the 43 missing students' deaths was murder. According to CNN, Murillo added they had detained 99 suspects, obtained hundreds of testimonies, confessions and evidences.

"These and other elements we found during the investigation allowed us to carry out an analysis about the logical causes and, without a doubt, we can conclude that the students at the teachers' college were abducted, killed, burned and thrown into the San Juan River, in that order," Karam stated.   

Mexico's Criminal Investigation head Tomás Zerón de Lucio reported the case was of mistaken identity. He explained a criminal group accused of murdering the students assumed they were members of a rival gang when they seized some public transit buses in Iguala, the place where the students were last seen before their deaths. But, The Huffington Post reported several suspects testified that they knew the men were students.

The 43 missing students were from Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos. According to The New York Times, it is a rural teachers college in Ayotzinapa, which is nearly an hour's drive from Acapulco.

On Sept. 26, the students, whose deaths have been announced a murder, had gone to Iguala to collect money and steal buses to use in Mexico City's protest march. However, Karam detailed that arrested Mayor José Luis Abarca ordered the authorities to arrest the students and were turned over to a drug cartel known as Guerreros Unidos.

More than four months since the 43 students disappeared, several demonstrations have transpired in Mexico, which has forced its government to focus their attention to the nation's crime and security problems instead of economic and educational reforms.

Meanwhile, former Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca amd his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, have both been charged in the case and are awaiting trial. The couple are allegedly mastermind of the abduction and deaths of the 43 students in Mexico. The authorities reported Abarca wanted to stop the students from disrupting an event his wife planned the night they went missing.     

On Monday, Al Jazeera reported the students' relatives protested in Mexico City about their deaths. They vowed to continue the search for their missing family members until a conclusive scientific proof confirming they're murdered surfaced.