Shark kills U.S. surfer at Mexico beach resort

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A shark killed an American tourist surfing in western Mexico, police said on Tuesday, the second fatal attack along North America's Pacific coast in four days.

A shark bit 24-year-old San Francisco resident Adrian Ruiz in the leg on Monday, opening a 15-inch (38-cm) wound from his hip to his knee and exposing his femur, the public security ministry in the state of Guerrero said in a statement.

Ruiz, who was surfing near the beach town of Troncones, 22 miles north of the Ixtapa holiday resort, was pulled to the beach by a friend.

"He was rushed in a bystander's vehicle to the military naval hospital, where he died soon after from blood loss," the statement said.

On Friday, a 66-year-old man was attacked and killed by a shark in the ocean near San Diego in the United States, the first person to die in a shark encounter off Southern California in nearly 50 years.

Fatal shark attacks in Mexico are also uncommon. The last one was in the Caribbean in 1997, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File.

No one has been killed by a shark on Mexico's Pacific coast in over 30 years, according to the museum.

Attacks on the Atlantic coast are more frequent, especially in Florida, which has about 25 to 30 a year.

Last year, the only fatal shark attack in the world was in New Caledonia, in the southwest Pacific, according to the museum.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich)