Mexico City, Dec 8 (IANS/EFE): The identification of the DNA of one of the 43 Mexican students who disappeared more than two months ago has reinforced the hypothesis of federal officials that the students were massacred and their remains burned by a cartel in complicity with the local authorities.

The federal prosecutor confirmed Sunday that the DNA found in one of the 17 burned bones in the southern state of Guerrero belongs to Alexander Mora Venancio, 21, one of the students who disappeared in the violent events of Sep 26.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo released the DNA results that came from the University of Innsbruck in Austria and which were compared with genetic profiles of the parents of the missing students.

Mora's identity was announced Sunday by the students of the Ayotzinapa school, who published it on Facebook, and which was later ratified by Felipe de la Cruz, leader of the parents of the missing students.

At a massive rally at the Monument to the Revolution, De la Cruz revealed that Argentine forensic experts confirmed Mora's identity, although he clarified that parents would continue their fight until all the students are accounted for.

"If (the government) thinks that, because one of our boys' DNA was identified, we will sit and cry, we want to tell them that they're wrong," De la Cruz, father of a missing student, told the crowd.

"I have no doubt that there was a mass murder," said Murillo.

The attorney general said that according to the criminals' account, the burned remains were collected in plastic bags and thrown into the San Juan River, where the federal agents found one of the bags with the 17 bone fragments.

Initially the parents had refused to accept the official version of the events of Sep 26, which said that local police in the town of Iguala shot at the students on the orders of the then mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, leaving six dead and 25 others injured.

The students were then handed over to the United Warriors crime cartel who killed them and burned their bodies in a dumpster in the nearby town of Cocula.

In a brief account of the facts, Murillo said that so far 80 people have been arrested, 44 of them police officers from Iguala and Cocula, while the search is on for 16 others.

Among those arrested include Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, as well as United Warriors cartel leader Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, among other members.

The prosecution said that the investigation would remain open, and that no immunity will be granted.