Gunmen kill Guatemalan public prosecutor

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a Guatemalan public prosecutor who was investigating the gruesome murder of a 9-year-old girl, the country's attorney general said on Wednesday.

The gunmen shot Rudy Pineda on Tuesday as he was driving his car in the Chiquimula area east of Guatemala City, said Attorney General Juan Luis Florido.

"Whatever the motive, this is unacceptable. He was part of a new generation of prosecutors," Florido told reporters.

Pineda was investigating the killing of Mishel Diaz in the eastern state of Chiquimula last year, whose body was found with her arm cut off, eyes gouged out and body carved up.

Shortly after Diaz was found, an angry mob beat a woman to death and set another on fire, accusing them of killing the child and stealing her organs.

The case shocked Guatemalans who have grown accustomed to crime in a country with one of the world's highest murder rates.

Pineda also was involved in investigating reports of a child prostitution ring in which former policemen were involved, the attorney general's office said.

Chiquimula, near Guatemala's border with El Salvador and Honduras, is a corridor for drug trafficking along which smugglers move goods through Central America on their way to the United States.

Florido also said a judge investigating crimes from Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war received telephone death threats this week after hearing testimony from victims of massacres.

Close to a quarter of a million people were killed or disappeared during the civil war.

A United Nations Truth Commission found over 80 percent of the murders were committed by government-backed security forces, but few officials have been prosecuted.

(Reporting by Herbert Hernandez, writing by Mica Rosenberg, editing by Vicki Allen)