Violent protests continue in Mexico after new details surfaced on Friday about the massacre of 43 Mexican student teachers who went missing almost two months ago.

Mexican officials announced that members of a local drug trafficking gang confessed to killing the 43 students after they were attacked by police in September. During a press conference on Friday, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam revealed that three gang members burned the victims on a pyre and pulverized their teeth and bones to prevent them from being identified.

Although officials have not confirmed that the human remains belong to the missing students, Karam stated that there are "many indications" that the victims were the students, the Guardian reported.

"The high level of degradation caused by the fire in the remains make it very difficult to extract the DNA that will allow an identification," he said, according to NPR.

The students, who attended a rural teacher-training college, disappeared on Sept. 26 in the southern city of Iguala after the mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, allegedly ordered police to attack them in order to prevent them from derailing a speech set to be delivered by his wife, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"He didn't say that they should be kidnapped and killed," the attorney said. "But the order makes it clear that they [the police] should act in that way." The students, who attended a radical teacher training college, were in the city to commandeer buses to use in a later protest.

Police opened fire, killing six of the students. The rest were allegedly handed over to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, who reportedly have ties with Mayor Abarca. Authorities believe the police told the gang that the students were members of a rival trafficking group. Both Abarca and his wife were arrested last week in Mexico City.

On Monday, thousands of people rallied in front of the resort's international airport in Acapulco in protest of the government's handling of the case.

Protesters chanted "Ayotzi lives, the struggle goes on," in reference to the missing students' Ayotzinapa teacher-training college, while many others wielded bats, metal pipes and machetes, reports Al Jazeera.

Eleven officers were injured during the rally, which was led by parents and comrades of the 43 students, as they tried to block masked protesters from entering the airport.

According to The Guardian, protesters in Mexico City carried handmade banners with the words "I've Had Enough" or "I'm Tired", in reference to a comment made by Murillo during his press conference on Friday.

Protesters also chanted: "It was the state."

"These killings and forced disappearances reflect a much broader pattern of abuse and are largely the consequence of the longstanding failure of Mexican authorities to address the problem," said Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco.