Journalist kidnapped in southern Mexico

Thursday's statement by the Guerrero state Attorney General's Office did not say when or under what circumstances the reporter was abducted.

The investigation was launched in Iguala after the Federal Police turned over Cano's car to the local prosecutor's office in that city.

The vehicle, which had been reported stolen, was found abandoned on the road linking Iguala with the town of Teloloapan, the state AG's office said, pledging to get to the bottom of what happened.

In a Twitter post in September 2013, the reporter for ABC radio in Iguala said Guerrero's highland zone and its portion of the Tierra Caliente - a region racked by drug-gang violence - are "more neglected than Acapulco," a tourist city that tends to be authorities' security priority.

In that same message, he called on lawmakers to "help out with one day of their salaries."

Iguala, a highlands city of 100,000 people, gained notoriety after 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, a rural teacher training college in Guerrero state, came under attack there by police on Sept. 26, 2014, after a protest.

Six people - including three trainee teachers - were killed and 43 other students abducted.

The trainee teachers were subsequently killed and their bodies were burned at a dump, according to federal authorities, who say the incident was the work of corrupt municipal cops acting on the orders of a corrupt mayor who had connections with the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.

But the students' families reject that version of events, and a respected team of forensic anthropologists from Argentina who were brought in by the relatives to take part in the probe have also questioned the findings of the official investigation.

Around 100 people have been arrested in the missing students' case, including Thursday's detention of Iguala's former deputy police chief, Francisco Salgado Valladares, who is suspected of ordering the students to be detained and handed over to members of Guerreros Unidos.

On Monday, journalist Armando Saldaña Morales was found dead in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca two days after he had been kidnapped; his body bore signs of torture.

For several years, Mexico has been considered the most dangerous country in Latin America for news professionals.