Authorities testing remains found in nine mass graves in southern Mexico have yet to find any of 43 students who disappeared after a confrontation with police.

The image of the beach resort of Acapulco has taken a new hit from Mexico’s drug violence, with 27 people killed in less than a day, including 14 men whose bodies were found with their heads chopped off at a shopping centre.

Police in Mexico today found the headless bodies of 14 men outside a shopping centre in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

Mexico’s government held a memorial service for seven soldiers whose decapitated bodies were left along a boulevard with a sign: “For every one of mine that you kill, I will kill 10.”

Experts were today trying to identify the decapitated bodies of 12 men found in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.