Mexico City, January 1 (RHC-teleSUR), -- Some 80 Mexican demonstrators have announced they will begin a hunger strike Friday to protest the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa teacher training college.

The protesters, along with the parents of the missing students, have been camping outside the office of the attorney general since Dec. 26, demanding the authorities find the students and free all the political detainees that have been arrested during the continual protests that have sprung up in the wake of their disappearance.

This hunger strike is the latest move from protesters to convey their calls for justice for the missing students to authorities.

On Sept. 26 local police in the Guerrero state town of Iguala, along with armed masked men, kidnapped 43 students from a teacher training college in the town of Ayotzinapa. They then allegedly handed them over to a local drug gang, who, according to the Mexican authorities, burned the students to ashes.

National police have admitted they were also surveilling the students at the time.

The remains of one of the students, Alexander Mora, were identified by forensic scientists in December, while the whereabouts of the other 42 students remains unknown.

The parents of the students have not accepted the official version of events, and have staged dozens of protests backed by tens of thousands of Mexicans who have bolstered their demands for justice.

The case is one of the most severe human rights crises in the modern Mexican history, and has led to a substantial loss of confidence in President Enrique Peña Nieto.