  We aim to explain in a unified way the experimental data on ultrahigh energy
cosmic rays (UHECR) and neutrinos, using a single source class and obeying
limits on the extragalactic diffuse gamma-ray background (EGRB). If UHECRs only
interact hadronically with gas around their sources, the resulting diffuse CR
flux can be matched well to the observed one, providing at the same time large
neutrino fluxes. However, air showers in the Earth's atmosphere induced by
UHECRs with energies $E>3\times 10^{18}$ eV would reach in such a case their
maxima too high. Therefore additional photo-hadronic interactions of UEHCRs
close to the accelerator have to be present, in order to modify the nuclear
composition of CRs in a relatively narrow energy interval. We include thus both
photon and gas backgrounds, and combine the resulting CR spectra with the
high-energy part of the Galactic CR fluxes predicted by the escape model. As
result, we find a good description of experimental data on the total CR flux,
the mean shower depth $X_\max$ and its width $RMS(X_\max)$ in the whole energy
range above $E\simeq 10^{17}$ eV. The predicted high-energy neutrino flux
matches IceCube measurements, while the contribution to the EGRB is of order
30%.
