Honduran assassins claim 200 victims

DEATH SQUADS calling themselves the "Lawmen of the Night" have murdered more than 200 young Honduran men in Tegucigalpa this year, with a single bullet through the head.

Most of the victims appear to be gang members in their early 20s recently back from Los Angeles, where many families fled last year from Hurricane Mitch.

The elimination of these imported gangs armed with automatic weapons from the US is seen as a kind of social cleansing of Yankee influence. It is carried out by the paramilitary groups that killed political opponents in the 1980s.