10,000 agents searching for missing Mexican students

Mexico City, Oct 31 (IANS/Prensa Latina) The search for the 43 students who disappeared in Iguala, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, continued Friday with participation of 10,000 agents, including federal forces, investigators, experts and agents of the Attorney General's Office.

The Attorney General's Office (PGR) clarified Thursday that this investigation was accepted Oct 5 and since then, different lines of action have been followed.

These include a board that works 24 hours a day, composed of federal corporations and international organisations, to provide search personnel in Guerrero and other states in the country with intelligence data.

Tomás Zeron, director of the PGR's Criminal Investigation Agency, said the groups were composed of relatives, PGR officials, investigators, teachers, school students and federal forces.

The search areas have included caves, grottoes, ranches, orchards, dams, hospitals, schools, hotels, ravines, mines, mountains, rivers and prisons, and more than 115 places have been searched.

A federal police diver died in the river Cocula, during the search operations to find the students. The dead police diver was part of the naval soldiers who are participating in inspection work, also in the river San Juan, according to media outlets.

Zeron announced the establishment of a telephone line, with the objective of obtaining information that could help find the students.

He highlighted that to guarantee security and reestablishment of order, the government assumed security in Cocula and Iguala, besides establishing a total reward of 64.5 million pesos (around $4.8 million) for the person who provides information that would help locate the missing students and those responsible.

--IANS/Prensa Latina

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