This past weekend a mass grave containing 28 charred bodies was found in South West Mexico. Many fear that these are the bodies of massacred students.

Currently, there are 43 students that are missing after a massacre that occurred on September 26 in Guerrero, Mexico. Reportedly, the students were coming back from a protest against hiring practices at a local school when the event transpired.

According to an interview with the GlobalPost, a 19-year-old university student going by the alias Eusebio explained the event. Eusebio, along with 120 Tixtla students, was going to Iguala to protest. On their way back from the protest, around 9 p.m., the students were stopped in the middle of the road by a police vehicle. When students exited the vehicle to clear the road the police immediately opened fire on them.

“The shooting carried on for a long time. More police arrived and were firing at us. I lay down in the back of the bus. Some people threw stones back. But what good are stones against guns? None of us were armed,” said Eusebio.

Eventually, other officers as well as individuals in casual attire arrived at the scene and joined in the massacre of the students. Many students were piled into police vehicles.

The armed individuals are members of a drug cartel called “Guerreros Unidos” or United Warriors. Corrupted police in the area have been working with the drug cartel. 

Eusebio and some of his peers escaped the gunfire and hid inside a nearby house until the next morning. When they came out they went to the prosecutor’s office to find their friends who were supposedly arrested. On a nearby street they found one of their classmates who was “arrested” the previous night. His face had been cleaved away, a trademark of the cartel.

Upon hearing this news, President Enrique Peña Nieto vowed to catch those responsible for the massacre. Over twenty police officers were arrested for corruption and for working with the drug cartel after the invident. The exact reason for the targeting of the students is unclear, but some believe the police were upset towards the disruptive aspect of the protests by the students.

Investigators are using DNA tests to confirm if the bodies in the grave are in fact the remains of the students.