riddled

by more than 150 bullets. From Mexico City, Will Grant reports.

In August, gunmen opened fired on an armoured car with diplomatic license plates. There were two CIA agents inside and a member of Mexican marines. Since the investigation unfolded under pressure from Washington, it became clear that the gunmen were in fact federal police officers. The government suggested that the officers were

in league with

the country’s violent drug cartels and that the attack was in some way related to the cooperation between the United States and Mexico in a fight against drug trafficking.

Fifteen people have died in overnight violence in Brazil's biggest city Sao Paulo. There has been a surge of killings in Sao Paulo’s poor neighborhoods over the past weeks as police

battered

a gang called itself the First Command of the Capital.

At least 13 prisoners have been killed in armed clashes with guards at Sri Lanka’s biggest jail after the worst riot there in decades. The violence began when police searched the Welidaka prison. From the capital Colombo, Charles Haviland reports.

Telvision showed wounded people being evacuated on stretchers and tanks deployed on the road outside. Later at night, army snipers were said to be operating in place of the police special task force, whose search of the prison appears to have triggered

carnage

. The director of the national hospital said some of the inmates who died or killed as they tried to escape the jail. It’s not known how many more may have died inside.