Abduction reported in Mexico area where students disappeared

At least 12 people have been kidnapped in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero in the same municipality where federal authorities say 43 college students were killed and burned by a drug cartel in September.
There were conflicting reports yesterday on how many were taken and whether some were workers for Media Luna, a Canadian-owned gold mining project in the municipality of Cocula, where police officers were charged with participating in the student killings.
A state prosecutor's spokesmen said 12 people were taken, including some mine workers. A second government official said that 19 were taken and eight later released and that those held included some mine workers.

Both insisted on not being quoted by name because the case had not been officially announced. The state official said the kidnappers were disguised as police or military.
But the president of Toronto-based Torex Gold Resources Inc, which owns the mine, said the reports about his employees being abducted were false.
Fred Stanford told The Associated Press he had confirmed that nine of his workers who were reported kidnapped were not taken and that he had conflicting information on a 10th employee.

"One may be involved, but because of a family matter. It has nothing to do with the mine," said Stanford, who is also Torex Gold's chief executive officer.

Stanford said Torex Gold has about 250 employees in the area, but at least 1,000 more who are contract workers.
In northern Mexico, a wave of violence in Tamaulipas state hit a television station in the border city of Matamoros late Friday, when someone threw a grenade at it, injuring two security guards.
The two guards were at the parking lot entrance of the Televisa station when they were hit by shards from the explosion, state spokesman Rafael Luque said.
Accomplices blocked roads after the explosion so the attackers could escape, Luque said. They detonated another device but it did no damage, he said.

The attack came after a week of violence in the city across from Brownsville, Texas. Enrique Juarez Torres, editor of El Manana in Matamoros, was kidnapped and released Wednesday, a warning that he said was from the Gulf Cartel for reporting on gunfights which killed nine people. At least 15 people reportedly have died since last weekend in cartel violence.
It was the fifth attack since 2010 on the Televisa installation in the violence-plagued border state.