Interim governor named in Mexican state where students disappeared

CHILPANCINGO Guerrero (Reuters) - Local lawmakers voted on Sunday to install a university administrator as interim governor in Guerrero, a state rocked by protests after the disappearance of dozens of students at the hands of police and drug cartel gunmen. State lawmakers named Rogelio Ortega, the head of Guerrero's autonomous university, to act as governor through next year after Angel Aguirre, from the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), stepped aside on Thursday. Protests spread through the poor, largely rural state in southwest Mexico following the disappearance of 43 students one month ago in the city of Iguala after clashes with police. The incident shocked the country and sparked demonstrations across Mexico following a string of killings and discoveries of mass graves in recent months that have derailed focus from President Enrique Pena Nieto's economic reform agenda. Police suspected of being in league with local gangsters shot dead one of the students in Iguala and abducted at least two dozen more, according to Mexico's attorney general. The mayor and his wife are charged with links to the local drug gang. Frustration is growing with no word on the fate of the students after a month. On Saturday, protesters looted supermarkets in the state capital of Chilpancingo and masked students blocked the highway running to the beach resort of Acapulco on Sunday. Nearly 30,000 people have died in gang violence in the nearly two years of Pena Nieto's presidency on top of some 70,000 killed since his predecessor Felipe Calderon sent the military out to battle drug cartels in 2007. (Reporting by Jorge Dan Lopez; Editing by Eric Walsh)