A group of women from northern Mexico have staged a protest over what they say is the authorities' failure to investigate the abduction and murder of some two hundred women over the last five years.

Women's rights advocates say the murders have all taken place in and around the city of Juarez.

Most of the victims are young workers at the recently opened assembly plants; they have usually been raped and tortured before being killed, and their bodies dumped in the desert.

The protestors surrounded the Interior Ministry in the capital, Mexico City, demanding that a high powered team of investigators be deployed to put an end to the killings. A recent investigation by detectives from the United States indicated that the killings were the work of numerous murderers.