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Six policemen were killed in western Mexico Monday after a gang of gunmen attacked them in an apparent bid to free a prisoner they were transporting, according to local authorities.
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The killings were the worst in the country since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office Saturday, and pledged to gang violence in Mexico.
The attorney general of Jalisco state, Marisela Gomez Cobo, said gunmen travelling in three vehicles attacked the state police patrol near a highway in the town of La Huerta.
She said one of the attackers was wounded and captured while the other attackers escaped, setting up two roadblocks with vehicles they commandeered and set on fire.
At his first news conference Monday, Lopez Obrador said homicides were down in the first weekend he has been in office.
Lopez Obrador proposed using the military as a base to create a National Guard to take on heavily armed drug cartels and other criminal gangs.
This isn't the first case of an attack on police officers in the country; in 2015, cartel gunmen shot down a Mexican military helicopter, killing six soldiers.
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