Mexican police have detained a fugitive ex-mayor and his wife accused of ordering a deadly police attack that led to the disappearance of 43 students.
Jose Luis Abarca, the former mayor of the southern city of Iguala, and Maria de los Angeles Pineda were captured by federal officers in the dead of night in Mexico City's populous working-class district of Iztapalapa.
Officials hope the arrest will yield new clues about the whereabouts of the students in a disappearance that has drawn international condemnation, sparked national protests and shaken President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration.
After more than a month on the run, the two were interrogated by federal prosecutors.
Relatives of victims later entered the attorney general's office while others protested outside.
"I hope that this arrest will contribute in a decisive manner ... to the investigation undertaken by the attorney general's office," said Pena Nieto, who last week met parents angry at the pace of the probe.
The couple had been hiding in a small, cement-coloured house with a dusty courtyard, far from their opulent life in Iguala, where Abarca owned jewellery stores and his wife allegedly ran local operations for the Guerreros Unidos drug gang.
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Abarca and his wife were captured "without a single shot fired" in one of three homes under surveillance.
Police also detained a woman identified as Noemi Berumen Rodriguez in another part of Iztapalapa over accusations that she helped them hide.
Authorities say the students vanished on September 26 after municipal police shot at their buses in the city of Iguala, 200 kilometres south of Mexico City, and then handed the 43 to the Guerreros Unidos.
Six people died in the night of violence. In one gangland-style killing, a dead student was found with his facial skin peeled off and eyes gouged out.
The teacher-college students remain missing despite a vast search operation by troops, drones and boats in the state of Guerrero, where a dozen mass graves containing 38 unidentified bodies have been discovered.
