Relatives and sympathizers of 43 missing Ayotzinapa university students march with a banner displaying the portraits and names of the students, on the ninth anniversary of their disappearance, in Mexico City, Sept. 26, 2023. Marco Ugarte/AP

Twelve years after the disappearance of dozens of Mexican students from a rural university, allegedly at the hands of drug traffickers and police, authorities said Monday they had identified 17 new suspects.

Thousands of people attended an annual march on Saturday in Mexico City to demand justice for 43 young men who were studying to be rural teachers in Ayotzinapa, in the violence-hit state of Guerrero. The students were traveling from Guerrero to a protest in Mexico City on Sept. 26, 2014, when police stopped them in the town of Iguala.

The investigation suggests the police handed the students over to a local cartel. In 2024, an alleged leader of the Guerreros Unidos cartel was arrested in connection with the case.

Dozens of arrests have been made but so far no one has been convicted in an affair that traumatized Mexico and stained the country's reputation.

Only three bodies have been recovered.

Mauricio Pazaran, the special prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said a new analysis of phone calls made on the night of the students' disappearance led to the arrests of the 17 new suspects.

He said the analysis revealed communications between public officials, police officers, individuals linked to organized crime groups, and private citizens.

He added that at a funeral home, investigators found an illegally obtained weapon, a bone and unregistered bone fragments and teeth.

He said a public employee and a municipal police officer had used the cellphones of two students days after their disappearance.

One of the new witnesses "participated directly in the events, but was a minor at the time," he added.

The minor, who was arrested in April, is a member of the Guerreros Unidos cartel, the prosecutor said.

He said a total of 168 people are being prosecuted in the case, 130 of whom were in pretrial detention.

In August, a former governor was arrested for ordering the deletion of security camera footage in Iguala on the night of the disappearances.

Last year, authorities arrested a former senior judge in connection with the case. Lambertina Galeana is accused of helping to conceal videos that allegedly showed the incident unfolding, officials said.

The state's former attorney general was also arrested in 2022 in connection with the case.

Authorities have been able to identify burned bone fragments of only a few of the 43 missing students. The work largely involves searching for clandestine body dumping grounds in rural, isolated parts of the state where drug cartels are active.

Mexico has been plagued by cartel violence that has killed or left missing over half a million people in just a few decades, according to the government's estimates.

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