They have been raped, tortured and murdered, their bodies thrown into the desert like dogs

Victoria Caraveo, women's group member

Between 1993 and 1997, more than 50 women were found murdered in the desert around Ciudad Juarez, which lies just across the border from El Paso in Texas. Most of the victims had been strangled and raped.

Women's groups, who say the number of dead and missing over recent years could be as high as 200, have criticised the local authorities for failing to investigate the cases properly.

Many of those killed in recent years were young women who worked late-shifts in the city's assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, producing goods for export to the United States.

Following a number of arrests the killings seemed to have stopped.

Angry protests

Police have refused to speculate on whether the eight deaths were related or linked to the killings of other women.

"Of course they're related," Esther Chavez, who runs a rape crisis centre, told Reuters. The murders never really stopped, she said.

Families are angry at what they say is police inaction

Local human rights and women's groups marched on Thursday to the prosecutor's office to demand action over the latest cases.

"Tell me in what part of the world do you find a cemetery with bodies of girls who didn't do anything wrong - they just worked - and for that they have been raped, tortured and murdered, their bodies thrown into the desert like dogs," said Victoria Caraveo of Mujeres por Juarez, a local women's group.

State attorney-general Arturo Gonzalez Rascon has vowed the killers would be punished.

Police first took notice of a string of murders in early 1995, and identified an Egyptian citizen Abdel Latif Sharif as the main suspect.

But within months of his arrest in October that year, the killings resumed. The police alleged he was paying a gang of bus drivers from his prison cell to murder in order to look innocent.

In March 1999, five bus drivers who transported the factory workers were charged in connection with some of the murders.

Mr Sharif was ultimately convicted in only one case.