A group protesting over the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in 2014 tries to force their way into the National Palace to protest against the government's lack of results in investigating the case, in Mexico City, Mexico, March 6, 2024. (PHOTO / REUTERS)

MEXICO CITY — Protesters on Wednesday smashed a door to Mexico City's National Palace, where Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was holding his daily press conference.

Protesters were reportedly angered by the slow pace of justice in the 10-year-old Ayotzinapa case, involving 43 missing students in the southern state of Guerrero in September 2014.

The students from Ayotzinapa have been listed as missing since September 2014, after police from Iguala detained them while they were travelling on buses

The president, who was in an interior hall speaking to reporters, described the incident as a "provocation."

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According to the president, the activists were incited by lawyers and people close to the families of the students who disappeared in southern Guerrero state on the night of Sept 26, 2014.

He pledged to meet with the parents of the missing students in 15 or 20 days, once he has more evidence surrounding the case.

In January 2019, the Mexican government set up a commission to help investigate the disappearance of the 43 students.

The students from Ayotzinapa have been listed as missing since September 2014, after police from Iguala detained them while they were travelling on buses.

Local media reported that the government's hypothesis is that the students were abducted by the police, who then handed them over to members of the organized crime gang "Guerreros Unidos" ("United Warriors"), who suspected that the students belonged to a rival organization.

According to statements made by alleged criminals arrested as part of the case and an expert survey, members of "Guerreros Unidos" killed and cremated the young people in a rubbish dump in the neighboring municipality of Cocula.

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The parents of the students rejected this assumption. Two forensic studies conducted by experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team ruled out this possibility, as it would be impossible to light a fire capable of completely burning 43 bodies in this rubbish dump.