MEXICAN President Enrique Pena Nieto announced a nationwide anti-crime plan on Thursday to allow congress to dissolve local governments infiltrated by drug gangs and give state authorities control over municipal police.

The plan comes in response to public unrest over the disappearance and likely murder of 43 student teachers in the Guerrero city of Iguala.

They are believed to have been killed and set alight by a drug gang working with local police, prompting huge protest marches across the country.

Mr Pena Nieto suggested that his plan had been influenced by the Iguala tragedy, noting that its "cruelty and barbarity have shocked Mexico."

He added: "Mexico cannot go on like this. After Iguala, Mexico must change."

Guerrero authorities reported finding the decapitated, partly burned bodies of 11 men dumped on the side of a road near another city in the state.

The president's plan would relax the complex divisions between which offences are dealt with at federal, state and local levels.

It would focus first on four of Mexico's most troubled states - Guerrero, Michoacan, Jalisco and Tamaulipas.

Presidential aide Aurelio Nuno said that the municipal police forces in those four states would be gone within a year and a half, replaced by state police under a clear command structure.

"What Iguala has shown the government and, I believe, all of Mexican society in a brutal and overwhelming way is the level of weakness that exists especially in this part of the country in terms of security, justice and the rule of law," he said.