TUCSON, Arizona (AP) -- Two Mexican border crossers died in the desert
                 west of Tucson, Arizona, during a deadly hot break in the summer monsoon
                 season.

                 Four people flagged down U.S. Border Patrol agents and told them their companion
                 had died Friday afternoon near the village of Little Tucson, on the Tohono O'odham
                 Nation, said Border Patrol spokesman Al Fresquez.

                 The men led the agents to the body of a 43-year-old from Guanajuato state, in
                 central Mexico.

                 The death was the second near Little Tucson in less than 24 hours.

                 Border Patrol agents out on a rescue mission Thursday night found a group of
                 seven people, who reported they had left four companions behind, Fresquez said.

                 The agents searched southeast of Little Tucson and found the four, Fresquez said.
                 Three were fine, but one, a 55-year-old man from Mexico City, had died.

                 The names of the deceased have not been released, officials said.

                 The deaths raised the number of people known to have died this year while illegally
                 crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into southern Arizona to at least 116, according to
                 an Arizona Daily Star compilation of law-enforcement records.

                  Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.