Police in Peru are investigating whether gang rivalries were behind a tear gas attack on a crowded discotheque in Lima in which nine people were killed.

The victims, most of them teenagers, were trampled to death or suffocated as about two-hundred-and-fifty Christmas party-goers tried to flee the choking gas.

Witnesses said there had been constant clashes between youth gangs in the area.

In Colombia, more than one-hundred-and-forty people died during Christmas celebrations: about eighty as a result of fights involving guns, the rest in traffic accidents.

In El Salvador, some fifty people died during the festivities and a similar number of casualities was reported in Honduras and Venezuela.