Mexican police injure five deputies at Congress protest

Mexico's Federal Preventative Police injured five deputies and many other protestors on Monday, at a protest supporting left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, outside the country's Congress, local media reported.

The police hit deputies -- Dolores Padierna, Emilio Serrano, Miguel Moreno Brizuela, Juan Jose Garcia Ochoa and Susana Manzanares, all from Obrador's Revolutionary Democratic Party -- in the arms and stomach, as they tried to set up a camp outside the legislature, as part of a larger group of protestors, challenging the country's election results.

The police and crowd battled outside the building with the police using truncheons and tear gas, and the protestors using stones and bottles.

The protestors allege widespread fraud in the July 2 elections, whose official result gave right-wing candidate Felipe Calderon of the incumbent National Action Party (PAN) a slender 0.58 percentage point victory over Obrador.

Incumbent president, Vicente Fox, also of the PAN, will give his sixth and final state of the nation report at the Congress on Sep. 1, a day when PRD supporters have planned an intensification of their protests.

PRD supports claim the election was marred by widespread fraud.