Newly-released images show final distressing hours of five Mexican college students as cartel thugs forced one of the victims to decapitate his childhood friend

Charred human remains have been found in an abandoned building in western Mexico’s Jalisco state.

Investigators searched the premises in the municipality of Lagos de Moreno on Wednesday and found four burnt human skulls. They also saw bloodstains on the floor and sneakers.

Authorities are now investigating whether the place is the same place where five kidnapped students were held.

“As a result of the work carried out, ministerial agents and the investigative police have found a house in the Orilla del Agua neighborhood of the above municipality (Lagos de Moreno) where evidence has been found, including bloodstains and footwear, suggesting that the five young people were in said (properties), ”the Lagos de Moreno prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Video footage released Tuesday by the cartel members shows childhood friends Roberto Olmeda, 20; Diego Lara, 20; Uriel Galvan, 19; Dante Cedillo, 22; and Jaime Martínez, 21, kneeling side by side in order.

The victims all have their faces bruised with tape over their mouths and their hands tied behind their backs.

The logo of a Jalisco New Generation Cartel enforcement unit is painted on a brick wall behind the five young men.

Mexican authorities Tuesday found the charred vehicle of Roberto Olmeda (left) containing a corpse. He and Dante Cedillo (right) are among five university students who went missing last Friday in Lagos de Moreno, a municipality in the western state of Jalisco.

Investigators from the state attorney general of Jalisco found human remains in an abandoned building on Wednesday while searching for five college students who have been missing since last Friday. The premises may be the same as in a video showing the students in captivity

Roberto Olmeda (left); Diego Lara (second from left); Uriel Galván (center); Dante Cedillo (second from right); and Jaime Martínez, (right) seen kneeling side by side while being held by their captors, allegedly members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in an abandoned property after being kidnapped last Friday

In the video, three of the victims lie face down next to each other. Another lies in the background as his friend is forced to beat, stab and behead him.

Blanca Trujillo, the state’s special prosecutor for missing persons, said the families “believe there is a good chance that the young people appearing in the photo are their relatives.”

The gruesome discovery comes after police found a burning vehicle containing a body on Tuesday. Investigators have confirmed that the car belongs to Olmeda. Galván’s vehicle was located on Sunday.

The Jalisco State Medical Examiner’s Office had yet to identify the remains Thursday.

The five friends gathered on Friday to attend a fair in Lagos de Moreno and were on their way home when they mysteriously disappeared. They were last seen at a lookout on the side of a road near San Miguel.

Uriel Galván’s vehicle was found by authorities in Lagos de Moreno, Mexico, on Sunday. He is one of five college students who remain missing after mysteriously disappearing last Friday and was seen on video held captive by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel

Diego Lara (left) was the last student heard from after texting his family at 11pm last Friday that he was on his way home. He, Jaime Martínez (right) and three other childhood friends are still missing

Lara was said to be the last to have contact with his family when he texted at 11 p.m. to say he would be home shortly.

Jalisco state attorney general Luis Méndez said earlier this week that investigators have been analyzing street surveillance and looking for witnesses.

Governor Enrique Alfaro has linked drug cartels to the disappearance and demanded federal prosecutors take over the case.

“What we are seeing here is an act clearly linked to organized crime,” Alfaro wrote on his social media accounts.

He called the killings — and an attack in July in which a drug cartel detonated a coordinated series of roadway bombs in western Mexico that killed four police officers and two civilians — acts that threaten the stability of the state.

“These are irrational, violent and direct attacks on the stability of the state of Jalisco, and they require a response from the (federal) government,” Alfaro wrote.

The Jalisco State Attorney General’s Office has seized an abandoned property that may be the same place where five missing students were filmed by members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. While searching the house Wednesday, investigators found human remains, including four charred skulls

Authorities set fire to Roberto Olmeda’s vehicle on Tuesday and also found a body in it

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gave no indication that his government will intervene soon. When asked about the video during his daily news briefing on Wednesday, the president jokingly pretended not to have heard the question.

On Thursday, the leftist leader said he did not have to apologize for not hearing the question because he was wrongly accused by the media.

“All a lie and a disgrace, we are not the same, I have principles and ideals,” said López Obrador. “I am a man of feelings, I cannot mock pain.”

If authorities confirm that the students in the video were murdered in the abandoned building, it would revive memories of the most horrific cases of drug cartel brutality, where kidnap victims were forced to kill each other.

In 2010, a Mexican cartel kidnapped men from passenger buses and forced them to fight each other to death with sledgehammers.

That tragedy came to light in 2011, when authorities found 48 clandestine graves containing the bodies of 193 people in the northern border state of Tamaulipas. Most had their skulls crushed with sledgehammers, and many were Central American migrants.

It was later revealed that the victims were taken from passing buses by the old Zetas drug cartel and forced to fight each other with hammers or be killed if they refused to work for the cartel.