Guatemala: 16-year-old girl videoed being beaten and burned alive by mob

A 16 year old girl was beaten and burned alive by a 25-strong lynch mob in Guatemala.

The vicious attack in the village of Rio Bravo, 77 miles west of capital Guatemala City, was videoed as a crowd stood by and watched the unidentified teenager being savagely battered and burnt to death.

According to Guatemalan news site Tiempo, the girl was accused of being part of a gang, who killed motorcycle taxi driver Carlos Enrique González Noriega, 68.

Two male accomplices shot the taxi driver, robbed him and fled the scene, disappearing down a series of alleys, but the girl took a wrong turn and was quickly surrounded and set upon by a vigilante mob.

The four-minute 38-second video shows the teenager being dragged by her hair into the centre of a crowd. She is punched and kicked until blood streams down her face. Dazed and stumbling, she falls to the ground, writhing in pain.

Then, one of the mob douses the young girl in petrol and sets her on fire. She screams and writhes until she finally dies in agony. Her murder is watched by a crowd that includes young children and elderly women.

The video was uploaded to YouTube and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times before it was removed. The incident has provoked an outcry on social media.

A police spokesman said that officers had tried to intervene, but were blocked by the bystanders. The National Civil Police has not identified the victim due to concerns that of further tensions in the area.

Violent lynchings are commonplace in Guatemala, where powerful drug and human trafficking cartels operate.

In March, two men were lynched in the village of Saquiyá, around 100 miles away from Rio Bravo, after they were accused of stealing a car. A mob of around 150 people burned one of the men alive, and the other was hung from a tree.

Corruption is rife in the country, which has the sixth highest murder rate in the world and less than four per cent of murders end in a conviction.