A presumed drug gang equipped with 10 homemade armored cars and heavy weaponry ambushed a police patrol unit in Mexico on Sunday, killing six officers and wounding four, authorities said.
The incident occurred in the northern Mexico border state of Nuevo Leon, on a road that leads to Colombia.
Officers were outnumbered by the assailants in the early-morning attack, the Nuevo Leon state police said, adding the officers acted “heroically” during the battle.
“Sadly, six members of our unit lost their lives in the line of duty,” the Ministry of Public Security of Nuevo Leon said. The ministry added that the four officers wounded in the attack were receiving medical attention.
The state prosecutor’s office released the names of the six officers in a tweet: Evelyn Lizbeth Garza Kruegel, Fidel Alejandro Olvera Gutiérrez, Idelfonso Francisco Del Ángel, Humberto Ascención Ramos Oaxaca, Carlos Andrés Hernández De La Cruz, and Alfonso Cruz González, adding “Rest in peace” at the end.
“The Civil Force reiterates their commitment to safeguard the residents of Nuevo Leon and committing that these acts do NOT go unpunished,” police said.
Authorities could not immediately identify the attackers, but it is worth noting that the nearby city of Nuevo Laredo has long been controlled by the Los Zetas and Northeast cartels, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Zetas cartel has been responsible for several violent attacks in Nuevo Leon over the last few decades.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador began his presidency in December 2018, as the country suffered from a soaring murder rate and firmly-rooted gang violence.
According to database company Statista, a total of 43,964 murders were recorded in Mexico in 2021, 699 more than documented the year prior. The number of homicides in Mexico increased between 2015 and 2018 before leveling at about 44,000 per year.
Despite a military-led program to fight drug cartels and organized crime that started in 2006, Mexico has documented more than 340,000 homicides and tens of thousands of disappearances since the system has been in place.
Pope Francis recently condemned the country’s violence, lamenting “so many killings in Mexico” after the slaying of two Jesuit priests and a tour guide in the northern state of Coahuila, where a man fled to a church in an attempt to escape an attack.