Mexico Protesters Burn Guerrero State Legislature Library, Chamber in Response to 43 Missing University Students

Violent protests erupted Wednesday in the capital of the Mexican state of Guerrero over the still unsolved Sept. 26 disappearance of 43 students in the town of Iguala, Agence France-Presse reported.

Protesters in Chilpancingo broke into the empty legislature and reportedly burned the library and the chamber where local lawmakers hold sessions. They also set fire to an office at the state Education Department, a day after they had torched the local headquarters of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's party.

A local newspaper, meanwhile spoke of "vandalism" and "psychosis" as it relayed Wednesday's streak of violence.

"The vandalistic acts committed by teachers of the Guerrero State Coordinating Committee for Education and students from Ayotzinapa against the premises of the Institutional Revolutionary Party's state steering committee, which were completely burnt down, have generated a climate of psychosis and terror in the south of the city," Vértice Diario de Chilpancingo wrote.

The violence led to the shutdown of the government palace, legislature and electoral tribunal, the newspaper added.

The government palace had already been attacked last month in protests directed at Guerrero Gov. Ángel Aguirre, who has since resigned over his handling of the students' disappearance. He has been replaced by Rogelio Ortega, an academic.

Mexico's attorney general said on Oct. 23 that the students from the village of Ayotzinapa were headed to Iguala on Sept. 26 to prevent a presentation that María de los Ángeles Pineda, the wife of Mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez, was to give before a local welfare body. On the way, they were stopped by Iguala and Cocula police.

In the confrontation that ensued, five students were killed along with a 15-year-old soccer player who happened to be in the area, according to the Los Angeles Times. Dozens more were wounded, and some 50 went missing -- all pupils at the Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa -- which the Los Angeles Times called "a highly politicized learning institution for the poor that has radical roots."

Pineda and Abarca, meanwhile, went into hiding and were not detained until Nov. 6, CNN said. They had flown the state to Mexico City's Iztapalapa neighborhood.