(Recasts, adds arrests)

By Frank Jack Daniel

MEXICO CITY, June 4 (Reuters) - Nineteen soldiers taking part in Mexico's offensive against drug gangs have been charged with shooting and killing three children and two women, the defense ministry said on Monday.

The arrests follow mounting pressure on President Felipe Calderon's government to clean up the human rights record of soldiers involved in a crackdown on cartels.

"Three officers and 16 enlisted troops were ... interned in the military prison of Mazatlan, Sinaloa" in northwestern Mexico, the Defense Ministry said in a news release.

Oscar Loza, Sinaloa state's top human rights official, said soldiers manning a makeshift weekend roadblock in the state are accusing of shooting over a dozen times at a car carrying two female teachers, a husband and wife and four children.

All the passengers were apparently unarmed, he said.

Since taking office in December, President Felipe Calderon has sent an unprecedented 25,000 troops to crime hot spots like Sinaloa to help corrupt and weak police forces tackle powerful cartels.

One child, a teacher and a man survived the shooting but are all injured, said Loza, who visited the La Joya de los Martinez village where the attack took place at the weekend.

"The man lost his whole family," he said. "It would be illogical that a father, traveling with women and his children, would confront the army and put at risk his family."

Calderon's muscular approach has won praise from Washington and is supported by many Mexicans fed up with a wave of gang violence that claimed about 1,000 lives so far this year, but opposition politicians and rights activists warn the use of soldiers in crime fighting leads to abuses.

A recent national human rights report listed many complaints against the army in the anti-drug crackdown, including sexual abuse of minors and arbitrary arrests.

Calderon met Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Monday. Prodi promised to share experiences from Italy's war against the Mafia but insisted Calderon uphold human rights.

Sinaloa state is home to the Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who is in a turf war against the rival Gulf Cartel.

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