Nine people were killed overnight in a clash between criminal groups in a border municipality of Tamaulipas.

Two gangs engaged in a gunfight in Los Guerra, a community on the outskirts of Ciudad Miguel Alemán, located across the border from Roma, Texas.

Several media outlets reported that the confrontation was between the Northeast Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, which have clashed previously in the municipality of Miguel Alemán. Which organization the slain men belonged to was unclear.

Televisa News reported that the two cartels are engaged in a turf war over drug trafficking and migrant smuggling routes.

Los Guerra residents posted videos and photographs to social media that showed lifeless bodies strewn across a road in Los Guerra on Tuesday morning. Soldiers and members of the National Guard attended the crime scene, the newspaper El Universal reported.

The violence came just 10 days after at least 19 people were killed in Reynosa, located about 100 kilometers southeast of Ciudad Miguel Alemán. Most of the victims were innocent civilians who were apparently targeted at random by armed men.

Following the attacks, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, accused by the federal government of ties to organized crime, called on municipal, state and federal authorities to work together to combat violence. The objective, he said, was to avoid a repeat of the June 19 rampage in Tamaulipas or anywhere else in the country.

President López Obrador took office in late 2018 pledging to reduce violence with a security strategy that addresses the root causes of crime. But a new record for homicides was set in 2019 with more than 34,000 victims and murders declined only 0.4% in 2020.

However, homicides declined 2.9% in the first five months of this year compared to the same period of 2020, giving the federal government some cause for celebration.

With reports from El Universal and Televisa