Mexican priest killed in ambush

A priest and two seminary students were shot dead after being ordered out of their car by gunmen in south-western Mexico, authorities have said.

The three were driving through the picturesque town of Arcelia, around 170km (105 miles) north of Acapulco.

No motive has been given for the attack, which happened at the weekend.

But Church leaders say the clergy are increasingly caught in the midst of the bitter violence waged by drug gangs that has claimed thousands of lives.

According to the Archbishop of Acapulco, Felipe Aguirre Franco, the priest and the two seminarians were in the area to help organise a spiritual retreat.

The archbishop said he did not know what was the motive for the murders but said the clergy had become hostages of the confrontations between rival drug gangs operating in Guerrero state.

"The law of the jungle, the law of the revolver, of the gun, the settling of accounts, the spilling of blood," now reigned, he was quoted as saying by Mexican media.

Tensions between the Church and the cartels were raised recently when the Archbishop of Durango said everybody knew where the alleged billionaire cartel leader and Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin Guzman, lived but that the authorities were doing nothing about it.

The Mexican government disputed this and the archbishop has since remained silent on the issue.

The attorney general's office has meanwhile charged 51 guards and prison officers for complicity in the escape of 53 inmates from a jail in Zacatecas state in May.

Security footage showed the guards making no attempt to stop a group of men disguised as policemen who entered the jail and drove off with the prisoners.

The escape illustrates the sense of near anarchy that pervades parts of Mexico, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Mexico City says.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed some 45,000 troops to tackle drug gangs since he took office in December 2006. More than 10,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since then.