Mexico City  - The death toll rose to two on Sunday in a small plane crash in northern Mexico a day earlier.

Two passengers died of their injuries and three others were also severely injured when the Cessna crashed and caught on fire less than half a kilometre from the airstrip at the Ramos Arizpe airport in Coahuila state, officials said.

The occupants, reporters and provincial government officials, suffered severe burns and were brought to a clinic in San Diego, California. One of the journalists was practically unhurt.

Mexico City  - A small plane crashed in northern Mexico on Saturday and one of its passengers later died from injuries sustained during the accident.

Four others were also severely injured when the Cessna crashed and caught on fire less than half a kilometre from the airstrip at the Ramos Arizpe airport in Coahuila state, officials said.

The occupants, reporters and provincial government officials, suffered severe burns and were brought to a clinic in San Diego, California. One of the journalists was practically unhurt.

Mexico City - Ten alleged drug traffickers died in a shootout near the community of El Rosario, in the north-western Mexican state of Sinaloa, police said Thursday.

The dead, who carried AK-47 rifles and handguns, apparently clashed with a rival gang late Wednesday some 80 kilometres south of the Pacific beach resort of Mazatlan amid a wave of organized-crime violence that has left some 5,400 people dead in Mexico so far this year.

According to Sinaloa state media reports, nine people died at the site of the shooting, while a survivor died later, as he was being taken to hospital in an ambulance.

Mexico City - Police found nine decapitated bodies in Tijuana, in the northern Mexican state of Baja California, the latest in a series of gruesome killings in the region, authorities confirmed late Sunday.

The killings followed nine other murders perpetrated late Saturday and in the early hours of Sunday in the same city, on the border with the United States, not far from San Diego.

Mexico City - Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino and a presidential adviser on security issues died when a small plane crashed in Mexico City, media reports said.

Mourino and Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a former deputy attorney general and a current adviser to the government of President Felipe Calderon, were returning to the capital from San Luis Potosi on the small plane that crashed Tuesday night, the Mexico City airport control tower confirmed.

The plane was carrying six people - a two-member crew and four passengers - when it crashed in a luxury office area of Mexico City.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said at the crash site that at least three people were killed and five were seriously injured.

Mexico City  - Police in the northern Mexican town of Ascension, near the US border, received a parcel containing a cooler packed with four human heads, Mexican media reported Tuesday.

The parcel arrived last week, but it was not opened until Monday because it was initially thought to have been sent by mistake to the police command in Ascension, some 150 kilometres southwest of Ciudad Juarez.

The cooler was labelled "Vaccines, delicate material, handle with care," so police first contacted local hospitals and health centres to check whether they had ordered vaccines.