Mexican priests killed while defending sanctuary seeker

Gunmen shot dead two Jesuit priests and a man seeking sanctuary at their church in northern Mexico, the government and the religious order said on Tuesday.

The priests, Javier Campos Morales and Joaquin Cesar Mora Salazar, were killed Monday in the Cerocahui community in Chihuahua state "while trying to defend a man who was seeking refuge," according to the Society of Jesuits.

The pursued man, who worked as a tour guide, was also killed.

The three bodies were then placed in the back of a pickup truck by armed men, covered with plastic and taken away, according to Father Luis Gerardo Moro Madrid, head of the order in Mexico.

Madrid said the shooter allegedly told a third priest who ran into the church: "I'm sorry, we're going to take the bodies."

"We denounce the murder of our brothers (...) We demand justice and the recovery of the bodies," Madrid said in a separate statement, adding that the killings took place "in the context of the violence this country is experiencing."

Experts say Chihuahua is an important transit route for illegal drugs bound for the United States, and is therefore violently contested between rival trafficking gangs.

Father Jorge Atilano Gonzalez, also from the religious order, told a local television station the priests had attempted to intervene because they knew the assailant, who was from the area.

"He wanted to confess" after the shooting, said Gonzalez, citing the testimony of the third priest. "What we believe is that he was in a state of alcoholism or addiction because of the reaction he had," he added.

The country's security secretariat said Monday afternoon that those allegedly involved had already been identified.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador confirmed the killings at a press conference earlier in the day, conceding several municipalities in Chihuahua state were struggling in the "presence of organized crime."

It is common for religious leaders in Mexico to act as defenders of their communities and as mediators with criminal gangs operating there.

In states such as Michoacan in the west and Guerrero in the south, some have even entered into dialogue with drug traffickers in a bid to keep the peace in largely poor regions with little government presence.

About 30 priests have been killed in Mexico in the past decade, according to the Centro Catolico Multimedial Catholic organization.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico condemned Monday's killings, saying the priests had carried out "important social and pastoral work" among the indigenous people of the Tarahumara ethnic group.

"The murder of these two well-known priests reminds us of the situation of extreme violence and vulnerability faced by the communities of the Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua," said Guillermo Fernandez-Maldonado, the UN human rights representative in Mexico.

Countrywide, more than 340,000 people have been killed in a wave of bloodshed since the government deployed the army to fight drug cartels in 2006.