Clashes broke out between protesters and police at the annual march commemorating the 1968 student massacre in Mexico's Tlatelolco plaza on Thursday.

The Oct. 2 march that has regularly been used not only to remember the massacre, but also Mexico’s tens of thousands of other missing and abuses of authority, was this year full of Palestinian flags and signs demanding an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

Following the killing of a student by another student at a university feeder school south of Mexico City last week, students also demanded an increase in security inside high schools and universities across the country.

Classes were canceled or moved online this week in more than half of the departments at Mexico’s National Autonomous University over security concerns following the recent killing and a spate of threats.

The preliminary investigation found links from the suspect to the "involuntary celibate" or "incel" ideology, a mostly online group of individuals, primarily men, who believe society unjustly denies them sexual or romantic attention.

Protesters marched from the square where in 1968 Mexican troops attacked students demanding an end to Mexico’s militarization and greater freedoms, leaving a never established death toll believed to be in the hundreds, to the capital’s central plaza.

While much of the march was peaceful, some groups vandalized storefronts and threw objects, including Molotov cocktails, at the hundreds of police guarding the National Palace.

Mexico City officials estimated the march drew 10,000 people and authorities said there were about 350 who were masked and acting aggressively.

AP journalists saw at least three other journalists attacked by police and protesters, and a police officer cornered and attacked by protesters.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a message on its X account that it is documenting a series of attacks on journalists and media workers, some of which were carried out by police officers in the capital.

AP video shot by Fernanda Pesce