MEXICO CITY – Mexico City police unfairly mistreated the survivors of a bungled disco raid as if they were responsible for the deaths of 12 people, the capital's top prosecutor said Monday.

Police in the capital burst into the News Divine nightclub, packed with teenagers celebrating the end of the school year, on June 20 in an operation to clamp down on underage drinking.

Nine youths and three officers were asphyxiated when more than 1,000 people rushed to squeeze out of the nightclub's small entrance as a wall of police pressed in from outside.

After the tragedy, dozens of youths were forced into police vehicles and taken to police stations without any explication and then humiliated and mistreated, Mexico City Attorney General Rodolfo Felix said.

“Some of them were marked with numbers and photographed and other people were ordered to strip naked for no reason,” Felix said. “They were victims and not responsible for the events ... and authorities should have guaranteed their protection.”

Guillermo Zayas, the senior police officer in charge of the raid, has been blamed for the deaths and is in jail accused of homicide. Another 18 police agents, and the owner of the disco, are also in prison waiting trial.

Mexicans, especially relatives of the crushed teenagers, are furious at police video images showing the desperation of revelers trapped inside after the club's owner announced the presence of police over the loudspeaker system.

Selling alcohol to people under 18 is illegal in Mexico and nightclubs are only allowed to operate within certain time limits. But those laws are largely ignored by bar and nightclub owners and police had sought to crack down on them.

The deaths have put pressure on Mexico City's mayor Marcelo Ebrard, a rising star of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, which is currently split by a leadership crisis.

(Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez, editing by Jackie Frank)