A video has emerged of school children armed with musical instruments pretending to hold a hostage and sending threats to other kids from a rival school.
The clip of students at a secondary school in Zacatecas, Mexico, is similar to those recorded by the country's violent drug cartels as they issue declarations to rival gangs.
"Narco comunicados", as they are known, tend to feature masked hitmen armed with assault rifles, sometimes pointed at a hostage they've taken from a rival gang to prove they mean business.
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Instead of high-powered weaponry, the school children in this latest clip appear holding trumpets pointed at the head of another child with a bag over their head and hands behind their back.
The pretend hitmen are seen wearing face masks as they yell mock threats at students from another secondary school in the area. Other children can be heard laughing as they do so.
BorderlandBeat, a website which documents drug cartel violence in Mexico, described the clip as "a tragic reminder of the effect the hyper-violent environment is having on Mexico's youth".
According to a Mexican government security briefing in September, Zacatecas had the 10th highest homicide rate out of all the Mexican states with 861 deaths this year.
The year before it had the highest in the country with a homicide rate of 107 per 100,000 people.
The deaths are being caused by an ongoing war in the state between Mexico's two largest drug trafficking organisations – the Sinaloa Cartel and the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG).
Last week seven bodies were discovered in Zacatecas on roads, at work sites and wrapped in carpets following bloody gangland shootouts.
It was also where a dog was recently spotted carrying a human head after a decapitated corpse was dumped next to a message signed by the CJNG.
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