Emergency in Guatemala after drug gang massacres 27 people

San Benito, Guatemala: Guatemala has declared a 30-day state of emergency in the northern Peten region following the brutal massacre of at least 27 people at a cattle ranch.

President Alvaro Colom called the killings sadistic and perverse, and said they were the work of a drug gang.

Colom said he would go to the jungle-covered region to personally direct operations aimed at rooting out what is believed to be a Mexican drug cartel that has taken up residence in Peten.

"Guatemala must face up to this aggression aimed not just at our country but at the whole region," Colom said in an address broadcast to the nation late on Monday.

Largest carnage

Such declarations traditionally give the army emergency powers, including permission to detain suspects without warrants.

The attack late in the early hours of Sunday morning on an isolated cattle ranch was one of Guatemala's largest post-war massacres. Gunmen believed to belong to Mexico's Zetas cartel killed the farm labourers, including two women and two children, and left their severed heads scattered across the pastures of the cattle ranch. A message written in the blood of the victims was daubed across a wall of the ranch house, threatening the owner.

A 23-year-old labourer who survived the attack said he was stabbed in the stomach, but his attackers were distracted by an attempt by some of the other victims to flee. The chilling scene was related by the surviving farm worker, who spoke to AP on Monday from his hospital bed in a nearby town.

Authorities asked that the survivor not be named for security reasons.

The survivor said he fell to the ground as he was being stabbed, and at that moment some of the ranch employees tried to flee, distracting his attacker. He said he was able to walk, badly wounded, to safety.

"I don't know how I survived," he said.

The man had worked planting forage crops at the ranch, when gunmen arrived asking for the owner — a man authorities said had links to the drug trade.

Mexican accents

The only other survivor was a pregnant woman whose young daughter clung to her so fiercely and cried so loudly the killers let her go. Relatives of the woman said the attackers spoke with Mexican accents.

Mexico's brutal Zetas drug cartel has set up in the largely indigenous region in Guatemala along the shared border.

The police arrived on Sunday morning, but violence continued on Monday in nearby areas.