A man has thrown a severed human head at a polling station in the Mexican border city of Tijuana.

Plastic bags filled with body parts, including human hands, were also found nearby as Mexicans voted in midterm elections on Sunday.

The man ran away, police said, and his objective is not clear.

Mexico’s election has been one of the most violent in its history, with 97 politicians killed and 935 attacked, according to security consultancy Etellekt.

On Saturday, five election volunteers were ambushed and killed on a country road while transporting voting materials.

A government electoral agency worker was shot dead in Tlaxcala state, near Mexico City.

An inactive grenade was thrown into a voting station in Mexico State and armed men stole electoral material from a polling place in Sinaloa.

Most of the violence is due to gangs trying to influence the election results and clear the way for their drug trafficking and other organised crime.

Dozens of polling stations were not able to open due to a variety of circumstances, according to Lorenzo Córdova, president of the National Electoral Institute.

Half of those were in the southern state of Oaxaca, where voting materials were stolen or damaged.

All 500 seats in the lower house of the federal congress, 15 state governorships, and thousands of mayor and town council spots are on the line.

The outcome will decide whether President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s Morena party gets a legislative majority.

Mr Lopez Obrador won the 2018 election in a landslide and has since expanded the role of the state in the energy sector, cut costs, and invested in infrastructure and help for the poor.

But critics say he has eroded institutional checks and balances and targeted autonomous bodies.

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