Indigenous Mexican indians continue to flee Chiapas

Indigenous people in Mexico are continuing their mass exodus of an area in the southern state of Chiapas where forty-five unarmed villagers were massacred last week.

Police and soldiers have been drafted in to protect the Maya Indians, some of whom say they have received death threats from paramilitary groups accused of carrying out the killings.

Sixteen men are in jail awaiting trial in connection with the incident.

Indian leaders have criticised the authorities for failing to act on warnings that violence was planned.

They also accuse many of those arrested of working for local branches of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party -- claims denied by the central government in Mexico City.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service