On June 7 last year, a total of 117 murders were reported in 24 hours, making it the most violent day of the year in Mexico. There have been mass killings and planned assassinations as criminal gangs targeted low-profile cartel foot soldiers and prominent political figures alike.

On Thursday, a criminal gang attack on a police convoy in central Mexico left 13 people dead, BBC reported. The ambushed at Coatepec Harinas in the State of Mexico has killed eight state police officers and five agents from the state prosecutor's office.

Bodies were seen lying by the side of the road after the police vehicles were sprayed with bullets. No group has so far claimed that it carried out the attack.

Rodrigo Martínez Celis, the head of the state Public Safety Department, said the convoy was patrolling the area to combat criminal groups operating in the area, San Francisco Gate reported.

"This aggression is an attack on the Mexican government... We will respond with all force," Martínez Celis said. Martínez Celis added that soldiers, National Guard troops, and marines were already scouring the area to find the killers. 

More than 500 police officers were killed in Mexico last year. The State of Mexico has witnessed different criminal gang activities and was known to be one of the country's most violent regions. 

According to a Republic World report, gunmen allegedly from a drug cartel ambushed the convoy.

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Violence in Mexico

Fourteen Mexican police officers were also killed in an ambush in Mexico City in 2019. Five police patrol vehicles were traveling through the municipality of Aguililla in the early morning when over 30 armed persons ambushed them. 

Homicide in the country has been record-breaking in the first four months of 2020, which peaked by 2.4 percent from the same period in 2019, Reuters reported.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had vowed to bring down gang-fueled violence when he took office in 2018. However, homicide cases hit a record level in 2019 and continued to climb even during the COVID-19 lockdown.

In June 2020, members of a drug cartel attempted to assassinate Mexico City's Secretary of Public Security Omar García Harfuch in broad daylight. 

García Harfuch survived the attack, which he later blamed on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), according to another BBC report.

In the same year, gunmen entered a drug rehabilitation center in Irapuato and forced patients and staff on the floor before opening fire on them. Twenty-six people were killed in the horrific incident, which the authorities attributed to the worsening territorial war between the Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the CJNG.

Falko Ernst, a senior analyst at Crisis Group, said the underlying problem is the shady line between organized crime and state security forces.

"Even though the Jalisco Cartel has publicly declared itself as an enemy of the state, there are still a lot of shady ties with fragments of the state, including at the federal level," Ernst said in the report.

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