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Search on in Mexico for over 40 people missing after clashes involving students, police and armed men

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Mexican authorities searched the violent western state of Guerrero on Tuesday for nearly four dozen people who were still missing days after a series of clashes involving students, police, and armed men, and the state governor said photos showed police had taken some of them away.

Twenty-two police officers were arrested in Guerrero on Sunday accused of killing two students during the clashes in the town of Iguala on Friday. At least six people were killed in a spate of incidents.

Local government officials criticised the police for showing an excessive use of force with a group of students in Guerrero, one of Mexico's most violent states where gangs which evolved from a fragmented drug cartel are fighting turf wars.

Thirteen out of an original group of 57 people had been located by Tuesday. Some had hidden, others had gone home.

"We have some photographs which are evidence in which some youths are taken away in patrol trucks by municipal police," Guerrero State Governor Angel Aguirre told Radio Formula, adding 44 people remained unaccounted for.

It was unclear what triggered the recent violence.

The state of Guerrero on Tuesday published a photo-montage of those missing.

"Obviously we are going to apply the full weight of the law against the groups who they tell us took part," Aguirre said. "One of the big problems is that most of the police are very contaminated by criminal groups."

He said authorities were searching by land and helicopter for the missing, and held out hope that many people were still hiding following the clashes and would soon reappear.

The incident comes as the government investigates whether army troops executed 22 alleged gang members in a separate incident on the southern fringes of the State of Mexico on June 30.

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