Policemen beheaded in Mexico border city of Tijuana

TIJUANA, Mexico - Three police officers and a fourth man were decapitated in the drug-plagued Mexican city of Tijuana on the US border, their heads and bodies dumped kilometres apart, authorities there have said.

Police found the heads of three municipal policemen and a man identified only as a friend of one of the officers in plastic bags under a Tijuana bridge hours after their corpses turned up in the outlying district of Rosarito, said Jaime Niebla, a senior Tijuana police official. The city is near San Diego.

Rosarito's police chief, Valente Montijo, citing witnesses, said men in federal police uniforms attacked the victims.

The killings were the latest in a spate of police killings along the US border in recent months. Officers often collude with drug traffickers, and shootouts between members of different police forces are common.

Drug violence has been rife along the border since President Vicente Fox declared "the mother of all battles" on drug cartels in January 2005 and sent hundreds of troops and federal police to border cities.

- REUTERS