WordBulletin

World Bulletin/News Desk

Five young people died and two others were seriously wounded after a gunfight in eastern Mexico City on Saturday, authorities said.

The prosecutors' office in Mexico City said two of the dead were female, aged 14 and 20. The male victims were 17, 22 and "about 20", a spokeswoman for the office said. The sex and precise age of the two wounded was still unclear, she added.

The shooting took place early on Saturday in Iztapalapa, a poor, crowded district that has struggled with crime.

Two cars were found at the scene, one of which contained the bodies of the two girls. The other dead were found on the road, police said. Preliminary investigations suggested the killings were the result of a street fight, a police spokesman said.

Homicide rates in the capital are about half the average for Mexico, where turf wars between drug gangs and their clashes with security forces have killed more than 50,000 people in the past five years.