Family beheaded in Nicaragua

Police in Nicaragua say an armed gang have beheaded 11 members of the same family and impaled their heads on fence posts.

Five children are reported to have survived the attack, which took place on Thursday in the village of Labu in eastern Nicaragua, 350 km (220miles) north-east of the capital, Managua.

No reason has been given for the killings, but the father of the family, Guadelupe Montenegro, was a former leader of the left-wing rebel group, the Andres Castro United Front (FUAC), which disbanded after the Nicaraguan civil war.

Correspondents say that despite the formal end to hostilities 10 years ago, large numbers of weapons remain in circulation, and ambushes, kidnappings and other such crimes are commonplace in rural areas of the country.

Those who died in the attack include Mr Montenegro, his wife, a 22-year-old son, his mother-in-law, and another family member. Six other bodies have still to be identified.

Peace accords

Mr Montenegro's former rebel group, the FUAC, was one of the last armed rebel groups to demobilise in 1997.

The FUAC was among a series of right- and left-wing groups that continued to carry arms after the official 1990 end to the civil war between the former Soviet-backed Sandinista government and US-armed Contra insurgents.

Some FUAC members had refused to lay down their weapons in 1997, accusing the government of failing to comply with peace accords.

Last year the group kidnapped a Canadian mining engineer and a Nicaraguan soldier and held them for a month in an attempt to pressure the government over terms of the peace agreement.