Mexico opens probe into US shootingof illegal immigrant

Mexico City: Mexican prosecutors announced that they had opened a murder investigation in the death of a Mexican man shot by US officials while trying to sneak into California.

The federal Attorney General's Office said in a statement that the probe was opened against "whoever is found to have been responsible", but did not name a suspect.

Mexico generally does not try to apply its laws to events that occurred in other nations.

Guillermo Martinez, 18, died on Saturday in a Tijuana hospital, the Baja California state attorney general's office said. He died one day after he was shot by a US Border Patrol agent near a metal wall separating that city from San Diego, according to witnesses cited by Mexican officials.

"An agent was assaulted by an individual who threw a large size rock," Raul Martinez, a spokesman for the US Border Patrol in San Diego, said on Monday. "The agent, fearing for his life at that time, fired one round at the individual, who fled back to Mexico."

Raul Martinez, who is not related to the victim, said the shooting occurred in US territory, about 46 metres north of the primary fence and one kilometre east of the San Ysidro border crossing.

Unsure

He said San Diego police were investigating the incident. He said he could not release the name of the agent involved until the case is closed.

President Vicente Fox said the death showed that extending border walls will not curb illegal immigration. He said US investigators were unsure if the victim had been struck by the bullet because he crossed back into Mexican territory.

The press statement from Mexico's Attorney General said Guillermo Martinez was in the company of four other people when he was shot.

At his briefing with reporters in Mexico City, Fox's chief spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said the government "laments and condemns" Martinez's death.