Captured at airport: Alleged hitman, El Ponchis, aged 14

A 14-YEAR-OLD boy suspected of acting as a hired assassin for a Mexican drug cartel has been captured by the army while attempting to flee to the United States.

• Edgar Jimenez, under guard left, is alleged to have killed for the Beltran Leyva cartel. Above: Images of El Ponchis posted online Picture: Reuters

The alleged young killer Edgar Jimenez - nicknamed "El Ponchis", Spanish for The Cloak - was captured late on Thursday at an airport near Cuernavaca with his 16-year-old sister as they tried to catch a flight to Tijuana and flee the country, said a Mexican official.

The sister told reporters that they planned to cross the border to San Diego, California, where their mother lives.

The two were brought to the office of the Mexican attorney general's office in Cuernavaca early yesterday, where the boy told the Press that he had participated in at least four beheadings. The source said his sister was accused of getting rid of the bodies by dumping them on streets and highways.

"I participated in four executions, but I did it drugged and under threat that if I didn't, they would kill me," said the teenager, who appeared calm and showed no remorse.

Speaking about the murders, Jimenez said: "I felt bad doing it. I only beheaded them, but never hung (bodies] from bridges, never," Jimenez was quoted as saying in the Reforma newspaper. Hanging the bodies in busy city intersections is a common practice among drug cartels hoping to intimidate rivals. Newspaper El Universal said Jimenez was paid $2,500 (1,600) for each murder he committed.

Another teenage sister accompanied the two, but officials said she was not suspected of being involved in the cartels.

"El Ponchis" wore blue jeans and a T-shirt and his sister jeans and a sweater when they were apprehended. Their airline tickets were already purchased. The army did not specify where they were detained in the airport or whether they had already passed through security checks.

The attorney general for Morelos state said the two would turned over to state authorities, who handle crimes committed by minors in Mexico.

The pair are suspected of helping the South Pacific Cartel headed by Hector Beltran Leyva, brother of Arturo Beltran Leyva, a top drug lord who was killed by Mexican marines in Cuernavaca a year ago.

The boy said he had been employed by the cartel since he was 11 years old.

Rumours that have circulated for weeks of a killer named "El Ponchis" as young as 12 years old.

Hector Beltran Leyva's fight for control of the cartel has caused a major spike in violence in the state just south of Mexico City, and in neighbouring Guerrero state, where the resort of Acapulco is located.

The siblings were living in a poor neighbourhood of Jiutepec, a working-class suburb of Cuernavaca, known as a weekend getaway for Mexico City residents. The suburb has an industrial area with Nissan, Unilever and other factories, rustic single-level concrete homes and some farms.

Only last month, Mexican police caught another minor accused of working as a gunman for a drug cartel after videos and photos appeared online of teenage boys mugging to the camera with guns and corpses.

One video, briefly posted on YouTube, showed a youth, apparently in his teens, confessing to working for a branch of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

Cartels in Mexico frequently post such interrogation videos to expose their rivals' deeds.

President Felipe Calderon, who launched an offensive against cartels in 2006, acknowledged several months ago that "in the most violent areas of the country, there is an unending recruitment of young people without hope, without opportunities."

More than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed since late 2006 in drug-related violence, and 2010 is on track to be the bloodiest year so far.