Mob burns agents to death

A MOB cornered two federal agents who were taking photos of children leaving a Mexico elementary school that was the scene of recent kidnappings and burned them to death on the capital's rural outskirts.

Television images showed a large mob of locals cheering, chanting and yelling obscenities as they kicked and beat the two agents, who were in plain clothes.

Then, as cameras from TV Azteca rolled, locals dowsed both with gasoline and set them ablaze.

It took the mob several hours to kill the agents, but police said heavy traffic and instigators of the violence blocked them from moving in until the two agents were dead.

A third federal agent was badly beaten, but eventually rescued and rushed to a nearby hospital.

During their evening newscasts, Azteca helicopter images as well as shots taken from the air by Mexico's largest television network, Televisa, showed dozens of neighbours milling around the burned, motionless bodies of two men who were lying in a street where they were dumped after being pulled from the flames by police officers.

Trouble began in the San Juan Ixtlayopan neighbourhood about 6pm (local time), when locals collared three men staking-out a local school.

Azteca and Televisa reported that the area's residents had been on edge since two youngsters had disappeared and were feared kidnapped from the school.

Locals apparently thought the federal agents were kidnappers when they found them near the school and took justice in their own hands.

There was no official word on the incident from the country's federal police force, but its director, Jose Luis Figueroa, called newscasts to confirm that three plain clothes agents had headed to San Juan Ixtlayopan in an unmarked car yesterday as part of an operation against drug dealing in the area.

When asked about complaints that authorities had failed to respond to local demands to investigate the previous disappearances of two children in San Juan Ixtlayopan, Mr Figueroa said a full schedule had prohibited federal authorities from concentrating on the abductions.


Theres no justice like mob justice.