By Mica Rosenberg

GUATEMALA CITY, June 27 (Reuters) - Guatemalans support the idea of police or vigilantes killing criminals in the belief that this will reduce a high murder rate, a top voter concern before a Sept. 9 election, a poll found on Wednesday.

Almost 6,000 people were killed last year in the poor Central American nation, a drug-smuggling corridor to the United States that is troubled by violent youth street gangs. Over 98 percent of murders in 2006 were unsolved.

Security has become a major issue in the September presidential election with a retired general running who is second in the polls promising to use army tactics to combat crime.

A poll published by the respected Siglo XXI newspaper found 60 percent of those surveyed supported "social cleansing" to stamp out criminals -- a term referring to extrajudicial murders of criminals by police or vigilante groups.

The poll also found that 55 percent of respondents support the death penalty as punishment for serious crimes.

"People are desperate because of the insecurity and the widespread impunity," said Frank La Rue, who heads President Oscar Berger's human rights office. "This frustration leads people to take the law into their own hands."

In a country where daylight street assaults and kidnappings are commonplace, murder rates have risen 60 percent in the past five years, according to Guatemala's independent human rights ombudsman.

Most Guatemalans say drug trafficking, corrupt police and a weak justice system have created a culture of impunity.

Dozens of bodies of tattooed gang members, usually teen-agers or in their 20s, have turned up around the country in the last few years with hands and feet bound and showing signs of torture, some have notes pinned to their bodies detailing their crimes.

The brutality recalls the death squads in Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war which left 250,000 people dead or missing.

The poll, which surveyed 1,182 Guatemalans, found that 40 percent of people see former Gen. Otto Perez Molina, who is running for president with the right-wing Patriotic Party, as the candidate with the toughest stance on crime.

Front-runner Alvaro Colom, of the center left, has so far focused on better hospitals, roads and schools in his campaign rather than security.

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