CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – Several employees of Canadian-owned mining company Media Luna were kidnapped this weekend in Cocula, the southern Mexican city where the bodies of 43 missing education students were allegedly burned last September, a representative of the workers said.

The Media Luna employees were traveling in an SUV when they were abducted Friday on the highway that links Alto Balsas to Cocula, Juan Zuñiga, who identified himself as a representative of the workers, said in a press conference on Saturday in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state.

The mining company employees were about 30 minutes from Cocula when they were kidnapped, Zuñiga said.

On Sept. 26, 43 Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School students were detained by police in Iguala, another city in Guerrero, and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which allegedly killed and burned them to cover their tracks, officials said.

Argentine and Austrian forensic specialists identified one of the missing students, whose remains were among those found at the municipal dump in Cocula.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said on Nov. 7, citing statements from suspects Patricio Reyes, Jhonatan Osorio and Agustin Garcia, that the students were murdered their bodies burned in Cocula.

The missing students’ relatives refuse to accept the official version of events and have staged numerous protests to demand action in the case.

Zuñiga did not say how many workers were kidnapped, telling reporters that it was “between 10 and 15 people.”

Officials have not confirmed the mass kidnapping, but a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office told Efe that authorities were awaiting information on the case.