Mexico: DNA Tests Can't ID Possible Student Remains

MEXICO CITY An Austrian lab has been unable to match incinerated remains found in a dump with the DNA of dozens of trainee teachers Mexico's government says were abducted and massacred in the country's southwest, the attorney general's office said Tuesday. The 43 students went missing Sept. 26 in Iguala, a city in the southwestern state of Guerrero. The government says the students were abducted by corrupt police working for a local drug cartel, which it said incinerated their bodies at a nearby garbage dump.

So far, experts have identified the remains of just one of the group. The Innsbruck Medical University's forensics institute told the Mexican government the rest of the available remains were so badly burned it was impossible to take a usable DNA sample.

Nonetheless, the institute, in a letter, offered to use a new technique, known as massive parallel sequencing, to test the bone fragments in the hope of eventually identifying a match. "We can't offer an estimate on how successful this will be but the technical specifications of MPS are the most promising of any genetic molecular identification method that exists," it said in the letter, cited by the attorney general's office. The new tests should take three months but there was no set time frame, the office added.

First published January 20 2015, 10:11 AM

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Mexico: DNA Tests Can't ID Possible Student Remains