TEGUCIGALPA -- Lawmaker Mario Fernando Hernandez and attorney Marcio Antonio Collier, members of the ruling Liberal Party, were killed Saturday in San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras, the police reported.

An unidentified third person was wounded in the attack, a National Police official told reporters.

The crime took place eight days before the primary elections to be held Nov. 30 in Honduras to choose the candidates for president, three vice presidents, mayors and legislators.

According to a preliminary report from the National Police, armed men with their faces covered with ski masks smashed into the two vehicles carrying Hernandez and Collier and immediately got out of their car and began shooting indiscriminately at the victims.

Hernandez, an administrator of companies who would have been 42 on Dec. 6, besides being a lawmaker for the Caribbean province of Cortes acted as alternative vice president for the Honduran Congress.

The slain lawmaker and Collier were activists in the internal movement of the Liberal Party led by Roberto Micheletti, current president of the Honduran Congress who hopes to become his party's candidate for president.

Hernandez and Collier were assassinated on their way to an activists' meeting in the teeming neighborhood of Cabañas in San Pedro Sula.

Mario Fernando Hernandez was seeking re-election as legislator for Cortes province.

Assassinated on Nov. 14 in the municipality of Morazan in the northern province of Yoro, Julio Cesar Padilla was the aspiring candidate for mayor who belonged to another internal wing of the ruling Liberal Party led by journalist Eduardo Maldonado.

A similar crime took place on Nov. 12 in the municipality of La Lima, Cortes province, where a politician in the running for a municipal office for the opposition National Party, Danilo Castro, lost his life.

In the same incident the precandidate for mayor of La Lima, Hector Arita, was wounded. EFE