Guerrero’s Attorney General’s Office has condemned a “cowardly” ambush by armed civilians of a state police convoy that left six officers dead and five wounded.

State officials said the attack happened shortly after noon Sunday on the Taxco–Amacuzac highway near the community of El Gavilán, part of the Taxco de Alarcón municipality. The attackers hid in trees alongside the highway and opened fire, they said.

The officers were traveling in two trucks headed for the community of San Gregorio in the municipality of Tetipac. After a shootout in which police returned fire, the attackers fled. Investigators later found dozens of spent AK-47 and AR-15 rifle shells at the scene, authorities said.

Local, state, and federal security forces have begun a search for the perpetrators, believed to have been led by a man they identified as Roberto Carlos “Z.”

Violent confrontations between criminal groups fighting for control of municipalities in the northern part of Guerrero have recently killed at least a dozen people, who have often been left on the interstate highway.

Source: El Financiero (sp)