Bullet holes mark a window at a home near an intersection where a video released by Mexican media outlets appeared to show a soldier executing a civilian lying face down in the street with a shot to the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Bullet holes mark a window at a home near an intersection where a video released by Mexican media outlets appeared to show a soldier executing a civilian lying face down in the street with a shot to the back of his head, in Palmarito Tochapan, Puebla State, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. The footage purportedly... (Associated Press) 
 
 PALMARITO, Mexico (AP) — A video released by Mexican media outlets Wednesday appears to show a soldier executing a civilian lying face down in the street with a shot to the back of his head. 
 
 The video's circulation was quickly followed by condemnation and pledges from the defense department to determine its authenticity and the Attorney General's Office to investigate the May 3 events in the town of Palmarito. 
 
 But late Wednesday, the gritty intersection showed no signs of any investigation. Bullet-pocked facades and windows and the reluctance of residents to talk were the only indications anything occurred. 
 
 The security camera footage first published by Diario Cambio purportedly depicts part of the military's encounter with fuel pipeline thieves that the government said left 10 dead in the central state of Puebla. 
 
 Fuel theft has long plagued Mexico, but is generating more violence lately as federal authorities crack down. Mexico's treasury secretary said Tuesday the practice costs the country $780 million to $1 billion each year. 
 
 The military originally said that in the May 3 encounter the thieves used local residents as human shields in an initial ambush on an army patrol. Two soldiers were killed and a third wounded. 
 
 Reinforcements of 1,000 soldiers and police were sent in and hours later another patrol was ambushed. Two more soldiers were killed along with three attackers. Puebla state officials later said three more attackers had also died. 
 
 It is unclear if one of those events is depicted in the video released Wednesday. The Associated Press could not independently verify the video's authenticity. 
 
 The heavily edited video captured by a security camera shows a silver four-door car slowly reversing into the frame on a darkened street with gunshots hitting it and marks already visible on its windshield. At least one shot appears to come from the rear door on the driver's side, which is ajar. 
 
 "We were there watching TV and suddenly you heard like collisions," said a man who lives at the intersection where the shootout occurred. He gave only his first name, Joaquin, saying he feared repercussions if his identity was revealed. 
 
 He said there was a lot shouting from various voices and he could hear vehicles reversing and advancing, then shooting. 
 
 "All you could do was listen because we couldn't go out because it sounded really bad, the shots," he said Wednesday. By the next morning, the camera that had been on a utility pole was gone, he said. 
 
 According to the video's time stamp, soldiers advanced by foot on the car about eight minutes after it stopped, but what happened in the intervening minutes is not shown. 
 
 The video shows the driver's door opening and a man stepping out with his back to the camera. At the same time, a second man exits from the rear door on the driver's side and lies down in the street. The driver is briefly illuminated as he steps through the beam of the tail light, then two soldiers rush in from the darkness and the driver quickly gets on the ground beside the other man. 
 
 A minute later, a soldier pushes a third man from around the back to the front of the car and out of the frame. Seconds later, the man who had gotten out of the back of the vehicle emerges from the darkness and is pushed by a soldier out of the frame in the same direction. 
 
 Then a soldier grabs the arms of the apparent driver and another soldier takes his legs, and they drag him toward the car's front and deposit him on his back. With apparent difficulty, he rolls over onto his stomach. 
 
 Six minutes later, the driver remains face down in the street as a soldier holds a rifle in the foreground and two other soldiers stand near the car. Suddenly, a gun and helmet enter the left edge of the frame directly over the unmoving driver and there is a flash from the gun. The man's prone body bucks and the soldier in the foreground lifts up one foot as if surprised by the sound. 
 
 Whatever happened next is not seen. The remainder of the video does not include a time stamp, but a narrator says more than 1½ hours has passed. The man's body remains in the street and soldiers walk toward the camera and the image suddenly jerks and goes white. 
 
 The military's statement Wednesday said the video shows soldiers coming under fire and capturing suspects. It said the video apparently also shows a soldier shooting a man while in custody. That incident must be "irrefutably" cleared up by federal investigators, it said, adding: "Under no circumstances can conduct contrary to the law and human rights be justified." 
 
 The Mexican National Human Rights Commission said it has a copy of the video and other recordings of the encounter. It said the gravity of the events demand a swift and thorough investigation. 
 
 The Mexican military has been implicated in extrajudicial killings before, including the killing of 22 suspects at a warehouse in the Mexico state community of Tlatlaya. 
 
 After investigating that June 30, 2014, incident, the rights commission said soldiers executed at least a dozen suspects after they surrendered. The military had said that all died in a gunfight in which only one soldier was wounded, but the AP found evidence at the scene that contradicted that version. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press journalist Enric Marti reported this story in Palmarito and AP writer Christopher Sherman reported from Mexico City. ||||| Mexico’s defense ministry has urged an investigation of the video, which threatens to spark a new scandal over the army’s use of extrajudicial force 
 
 Mexico’s defense ministry has urged federal prosecutors to investigate a video that appears to show a soldier shooting a man lying on the ground in the head at point-blank range, and risks sparking a new scandal for the armed forces. 
 
 The ministry said in a statement that prosecutors should “comprehensively clear up” whether the video indeed showed the soldier shooting the detained man after a clash last week between security forces and suspected criminals. 
 
 Published online, the video shows a shot-up car coming to a halt, coming under further gunfire and eventually being surrounded by soldiers. Minutes later, its doors open and people exiting the vehicle are forced onto the ground in a dimly lit area. 
 
 Soon afterward, soldiers drag a man who appears to be still alive from the dark area to a well-lit part of the shot, where he lies on the ground for about six minutes before a soldier steps toward him and appears to shoot him in the back of the head. 
 
 A dark stain then spreads outward from the prone man’s head on the asphalt as soldiers move around. 
 
 According to the videos posted online and Mexican media, the events took place during a clash between soldiers and suspected oil thieves in Palmarito in the central state of Puebla last week, in which four soldiers and six suspected criminals died. 
 
 Mexico suffering from 'serious crisis of violence and impunity', report says Read more 
 
 Mexico’s army has been embroiled in a number of scandals in the past few years centering on the use of extrajudicial force, embarrassing the government and undermining its efforts to clamp down on widespread gang violence. 
 
 In its statement, the defense ministry said soldiers had come under fire from vehicles in Palmarito and had detained some of the attackers. It pledged to cooperate with the attorney general’s office in the investigation. 
 
 Two shootouts between federal security forces and suspected gang members in 2014 and 2015 that took more than 60 lives prompted accusations by human rights groups that federal forces had carried out extrajudicial killings. 
 
 Three soldiers are in prison over one of the shootings. 
 
 A report on Tuesday said Mexico had the second-highest number of murders last year among countries considered in “armed conflicts”. 
 
 In a statement on Wednesday, the government said the term “armed conflict” used by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in its report was inapplicable to Mexico and that the final murder tally for 2016 was not yet official. 
 

– A video released online appears to show a Mexican soldier executing a suspected oil thief at point-blank range as he lays defenseless on the ground. The heavily edited video, taken from a surveillance camera, shows a car coming under fire during what the military describes as a series of ambushes that left four soldiers and six suspects dead in Palmarito on May 3. As soldiers surround the vehicle, its occupants exit and are forced to lie down in front of the car. Soldiers are then seen dragging a suspect to the same spot. He appears injured but rolls from his back onto his front. Six minutes later, a soldier appears at the side of the frame and appears to shoot the man in the back of the head, per the AP. A dark stain spreads around him, reports Reuters. "There was already concern about the use of excessive force by the military. Now this video seems to give us the proof," says the chairwoman of Mexico's Senate Commission on Human Rights, per the Washington Post, which identifies the man shot as Raul Jimenez Martinez, 46. Mexico's defense ministry, however, says it will cooperate fully with an investigation launched by the attorney general's office on May 4. "Under no circumstances can conduct contrary to the law and human rights be justified," the ministry says. Residents of Palmarito have already taken to the streets to protest the deaths of the suspects, placing the blame on the army, though the defense ministry previously claimed the suspects used residents as human shields.