Photos show Mexican children wielding rifles as volunteer police force battles organized crime

Photos have emerged showing children in Mexico wielding rifles as they have been recruited by a volunteer police force to combat organized crime, a report says. The children, who are as young as 12, paraded around a sports field before joining the patrol in Ayahualtempa, a village in the southwestern Guerrero state where authorities report being overwhelmed by kidnappings, according to Reuters. "We can't study because of lawlessness," one of the teenagers was quoted by the news agency as telling the Milenio television channel, adding that he had learned how to shoot a gun following a series of lessons. In early January, an alleged cartel drone attack in the Guerrero state left five people dead. Children hold rifles before a ceremony to join the ranks of the community police a few days after an armed group abducted four people from Ayahualtempa, in Mexico's Guerrero state, on January 24.