"The song of Osama," and other Mexican folk tunes recounting tales of the September 11 terrorist attacks and their alleged mastermind have become the hottest new recordings hawked by street sellers in northern Mexico.

The tunes are played in the style of "corridos," folk songs popular in northern Mexico that focus largely on fairly current events, and on the lives of the rich, the powerful and the infamous.

One of them is "El corrido de Osama." "Across the skies, the seas and the land they are looking for you, "Bin Laden, the terrorist whom the CIA trained, "This was the biggest mistake of the American government."

"Tragedy in Manhattan" recalls the airborne suicide attacks that tumbled the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. "It was the 11th of September when the events occurred, "The pride of Manhattan destroyed by two planes."

"People in the rural areas in northern Mexico learn more about current events from corridos than from the news," said Jose Luis Cardenas, an anchor at Radio Mexicana de Nuevo Laredo.

"In news broadcasts, the information is given once or twice; with corridos, people buy the disc or the cassette and one does not forget what happened," he said.

US authorities believe the September 11 attacks were done by Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi dissident, Anti-US activist who fought alongside CIA-backed Afghan militias to repel the 1979-1989 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

(Agencies)