AFP/Mexico City
A leader of a gang involved in the disappearance of 43 students died yesterday during a police operation in central Mexico, a security spokesman told AFP.
The National Security Commission spokesman said Guerreros Unidos honcho Benjamin Mondragon apparently killed himself rather than surrender in the state of Morelos.
But Mexican media said he was killed by the federal police during a clash in the city of Jiutepec, 100km south of Mexico City.
“The information I have ... is that he preferred to commit suicide rather than give himself up,” said the spokesman, who declined to give his name.
The spokesman did not know if Mondragon, known as “El Benjamon,” was involved in the case of the missing students in the southern state of Guerrero, where his gang is based.
Last week, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said the Guerreros Unidos no longer have a clear leadership since the capture in May of its boss, Mario “El Sapo Guapo” Casarrubias.
Authorities say Mondragon’s gang worked hand-in-hand with corrupt municipal officers in a night of violence in the city of Iguala on September 26 that left six people dead and the 43 aspiring teachers missing.
Witnesses saw several students being taken away in patrol cars.
Nine clandestine graves with at least 28 bodies have been found on the outskirts of Iguala since then, raising fears that the students were executed.
The case has drawn international condemnation and sparked national protests last week.
The gang leader’s death came a day after students from the missing group’s teacher training college torched part of the Guerrero state government building amid angry protests demanding the resignation of Governor Angel Aguirre.
Protesters vowed to “radicalize” their movement if officials fail to provide information about the missing students’ whereabouts soon. Ramos Reyes, head of the radical CETEG teachers union, said the demonstrators plan to seize city halls around Guerrero.
State authorities are deploying more riot police to counter the protests.
Dozens of state police reclaimed security while firefighters battled the blaze. A small truck was also set on fire near the complex. No injuries were reported in the fires.
The students later broke into Chilpancingo’s city hall and shattered windows.
The attack on Aguirre’s offices came after clashes between riot police and protesters armed with rocks and sticks at the gates of the state congress.
Some 150 police used shields to keep about 500 protesters away from the state legislature. Five teachers and two officers were injured, an AFP correspondent said.
Protesters had already set fired to the local parliament’s library in a protest days after the students disappeared.
Students from a teacher training college outside Chilpancingo have been fuming over the fate of 43 comrades who vanished after their buses were shot at by municipal police in the city of Iguala on September 26.
The city’s mayor, his wife and the police chief are wanted for questioning but have gone into hiding.
The students are known for their radical protests, but they insist they went to Iguala to raise funds, though authorities say they also seized buses to return home, a common practice among them.
As the authorities wrestle with the mass disappearance, Guerrero police were caught in another controversial shooting late Sunday, when a state anti-kidnap unit fired at a van carrying two German students, wounding one of them.
Prosecutors say the van ignored a checkpoint the officers had set up in Chilpancingo and that the officers shot at its tires to stop it after hearing a gun-like noise.
The student was in stable condition at a Mexico City hospital, according to his school in Mexico, the Monterrey Institute of Technology.
Firefighters try to extinguish the fire at the Government Palace in the city of Chilpancingo, Mexico, after a group of students from the Escuela Norma
