Two Mexican detectives searching for 43 missing students who were 'kidnapped by drug cartel' in 2014 have DISAPPEARED

Two detectives who have been investigating the 43 student teachers who were abducted and killed in 2014 in Mexico are now missing, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador revealed Tuesday.

Suay Domínguez, 30, and Enrique Linares, 40, were last seen Sunday in Cuernavaca, a capital of the central state of Morelos.

The federal agents, who are assigned to the Morelos State Attorney General’s Office, were traveling to the Pacific coast state of Guerrero to investigate the death last Thursday of student teacher Yanqui Peralta, 23, in Ayotzinapa.

López Obrador said that a search effort was underway to find Domínguez and Linares.

“I hope this is not related to those who do not want us to find the youths,” the leftist leader told reporters during Tuesday’s daily press briefing at the National Palace in Mexico City.

Suay Domínguez is one of two Mexican federal detectives who have been missing since Sunday when they traveled from the central state of Morelos to the Pacific coast state of Guerrero to investigate last Thursday's police shooting death of Yanqui Peralta, a student teacher

Federal detective Enrique Linares (pictured) and his fellow partner Suay Domínguez are assigned to the Morelos State Attorney General's Office. They have been investigating the September 2014 abduction and murder of 43 student teachers in Iguala, a city in the Pacific coast of Guerrero 

The disappearances of Domínguez and Linares were the latest signs of what appeared to be a generalized breakdown in law and order in Guerrero state, home to the resort of Acapulco.

The state has been dogged for a decade by the case of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College who were allegedly abducted by cops in the municipality of Iguala on September 26, 2014 and turned over to a drug gang to be killed.

Students at that college, located in Tixtla, north of Acapulco, have a long history of demonstrating and clashing with police.

Peralta was shot dead in what police said was a confrontation with him and three other students after they were stopped in a vehicle that had been reported stolen.

The Guerrero State Attorney General’s Office said the students refused to get out of the car and were the first ones to open fire before the cops responded.

During Tuesday's press briefing at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed the disappearance of two detectives assigned to the Morelos State Attorney General's Office 

One of the police officers involved in that shooting had been detained and placed under investigation in the case, after the president described the shooting as "an abuse of authority" and confirmed the dead student had not fired any gun.

López Obrador acknowledged Tuesday that the state police officer detained in the case had escaped from state custody before being turned over to federal prosecutors.

The president suggested that Guerrero state police had not properly guarded their colleague, saying arrest "protocols had not been followed."

The 43 missing male students are believed to have been killed and burned by drug gang members.

Domínguez and Linares formed part of a team of agents who have spent years trying to find where the students remains had been dumped.

Authorities have been able to identify burned bone fragments of only three of the 43 missing students.

The work largely involves searching for clandestine body dumping grounds in rural, isolated parts of the state where drug cartels are active.

So dominant are the drug cartels in Guerrero that videos posted on social media this week showed drug gang enforcers brutally beating bus drivers in Acapulco for failing to act as lookouts for the cartel.

One video showed a presumed gang enforcer dealing more than a dozen hard, open-hand slaps to a driver and calling him an "animal," and demanding he check in several times a day with the gang.

In testimony before a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee this week, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, acknowledged "there are parts of the country that are effectively under the control of the cartels in certain respects."

The escape of the accused police officer and the disappearance of the two detectives came as tensions flared between López Obrador and the families of the missing students, who accuse him of not doing enough to investigate the fate of their sons.

Last Wednesday, demonstrators supporting the families of the missing students were able to use a pickup truck to break down the wooden doors of the National Palace, where López Obrador lives and works.

The protesters battered down the doors and entered the colonial-era palace before they were driven off by security agents.

López Obrador called the protests a provocation, and claimed the demonstrators had sledgehammers, powerful slingshots and blowtorches. He has complained about the involvement of human rights groups, who he claimed have prevented him from speaking directly to the parents of the missing students.