MEXICO CITY - A Mexican police chief was reportedly fired Friday following the release of two police training videos that show officers practising torture techniques.

The Reforma newspaper says Carlos Tornero, police chief in the central city of Leon, was fired at the recommendation of the Guanajuato state attorney general's office for human rights. It reports the head of police training, Javier Haro Esparza, was also fired. Officials from Guanajuato's state government could not be reached for comment.

One video, obtained by the newspaper El Heraldo de Leon, shows police appearing to squirt water up a man's nose, a torture technique once notorious among Mexican police. They then dunk his head in a hole that a voice on the video says is full of excrement and rats. In the other video, an unidentified English-speaking trainer asks a police agent to roll in his own vomit.

Tornero claimed the videos showed officers from an elite police unit being trained to withstand torture in the event they are kidnapped by organized crime groups.

The footage provoked an uproar across Mexico amid separate accusations of abuse by police and soldiers engaged in a nationwide battle to root out drug gangs.

The National Human Rights Commission has documented 634 cases of military abuse since President Felipe Calderon sent more than 20,000 soldiers to assist in the crackdown.

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