The 2014 disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students has remained an open wound for the people of México. The recent arrests of members of the military — as well as high-ranking officials in the former Peña-Nieto government — represent a significant step forward. The México Daily News has just published an update on the case, and we have excerpted that coverage here.

Eight soldiers were arrested this week in connection with the 2014 disappearance and presumed murder of 43 male teaching students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Iguala, Guerrero. They are among 16 army members for whom arrest warrants were issued on June 13 due to their alleged involvement in the abduction and presumed murder of the 43.

The eight other military personnel, including Colonel Rafael Hernández Nieto, remain at large. Colonel Hernández is accused of involvement in organized crime, while the 15 soldiers are accused of engaging in organized crime and forced disappearance.

The students, traveling on buses they commandeered to go to a protest in Mexico City, were intercepted by security forces who allegedly handed them over to members of the Guerreros Unidos crime gang, who allegedly killed the students — who were possibly mistaken for members of, or collaborators with, a rival crime gang — and disposed of their bodies.

According to a protected witness identified only as “Juan,” soldiers that belonged to the 27th and 41st infantry battalions were on the payroll of the Guerreros Unidos.

Former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, the architect of the previous president Peña-Nieto government’s widely discredited “historical truth” vis-à-vis the disappearance of the students, was arrested last August in connection with the Ayotzinapa case. The federal government has asked the government of Israel to extradite Tomás Zerón — head of the now-defunct Criminal Investigation Agency under Peña Nieto — to Mexico, where he faces charges of abduction, torture and tampering with evidence in connection with the Ayotzinapa case. [Israel has refused.]

President López Obrador, who has vowed to deliver justice for the students and their families…said earlier this week that he had sent a second letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking for Zerón’s extradition.