Mexico mayor, wife arrested over missing students

Mexican police detained a fugitive ex-mayor and his wife Tuesday accused of ordering a deadly police attack that left 43 students missing, raising hopes of a break in a case bedeviling the nation.

Jose Luis Abarca, the former mayor of the southern city of Iguala, and Maria de los Angeles Pineda were captured by federal officers in the dead of night in Mexico City's populous working-class district of Iztapalapa.

Officials hope the arrests will yield new clues about the whereabouts of the students in a disappearance that has drawn international condemnation, sparked national protests and shaken President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration.

After more than a month on the run, the two were interrogated by federal prosecutors. Relatives of victims later entered the attorney general's office while some 30 people protested outside.

"I hope that this arrest will contribute in a decisive manner... to the investigation undertaken by the attorney general's office," said Pena Nieto, who last week met parents angry at the pace of the probe.

The couple had been hiding in a modest concrete house, far from their opulent life in Iguala, where Abarca owned jewelry stores and his wife allegedly ran local operations for the Guerreros Unidos drug gang.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Abarca and his wife were captured "without a single shot fired" at 2:30 am in one of three homes that were put under secret surveillance following intelligence work.

Police also detained a woman identified as Noemi Berumen Rodriguez in another part of Iztapalapa over accusations that she helped them hide.

Federal officials said the couple was arrested in a concrete house with a pink metal door. Another official had earlier said it took place in a cement-colored house, which had also been under surveillance.

Authorities say the students vanished on September 26 after municipal police shot at their buses in Iguala, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Mexico City, and then handed the 43 to the Guerreros Unidos.

Six people died in the night of violence. In one gangland-style killing, a dead student was found with his facial skin peeled off and eyes gouged out.

The teacher-college students remain missing despite a vast search operation by troops, drones and boats in the state of Guerrero, where a dozen mass graves containing 38 unidentified bodies have been discovered.