THREE men wearing Batman masks raided two cinemas in northern Mexico at showings of The Dark Knight Rises, wounding one man.

The caped crusaders stole $18,000 from two theatres on Monday, leaving the manager of one cinema with serious injuries to the face.

Police from the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua told reporters the first raid occurred after midnight at a Cinepolis movie theatre in the state capital, Chihuahua. The robbers stole all of the ticket money for the film, amounting to about half their overall estimated theft.

The second attack, perpetrated "apparently by the same subjects", targeted the offices of a Cinemax theatre in the same city, where the manager was injured.

None of the assailants has been apprehended, according to the report, which did not specify whether the audiences were aware of the incidents.

On Friday, 800 people were evacuated from a cinema in Mexico's second largest city - Guadalajara - after a fire broke out during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Nobody was reported to have been injured in the blaze.

On July 20, 12 people were killed and 59 were wounded in a shooting at a theatre showing the Batman film in the United States, in Aurora, Colorado.

Originally published as 'Batmen' terrorise Mexican cinemas