On Monday, 15 Mexican police officers were killed and five were seriously wounded in the state of Jalisco.

A convoy of officers was attacked as it moved along a mountain road.

The gunmen, who ambushed the officers, are believed to belong to the New Generation Jalisco cartel.

The attackers used burning vehicles to block the road while they opened fire on the officers with machine guns and grenade launchers from the mountainsides.

Alejandro Hope, a security expert quoted in the Guardian, has noted that “Shootouts with criminal groups are common,” but what is rare “is for government forces to come off worse than the criminal groups.”

Back in 2010, 12 federal officers were killed in the state of Michoacán in an attack that was blamed on La Familia cartel.

Since 2013, more than 70 public officials, a number which includes police officers, have reportedly been murdered in Jalisco.

Alejandro Solorio, the state’s public security commissioner, informed Radio Fórmula that Monday’s ambush was a retaliation for recent law enforcement successes, saying: “It was a reaction to the detentions and actions that we have carried out against organized crime.”

Solorio brought attention to the detention of 15 people who were allegedly linked to a failed attempt to kill him on March 30.

Large trucks were used in that attack to block off the road while the would-be assassins shot at Solorio.

Solorio stresses that the attempt on his life was itself a retaliation for the death of a local cartel boss named Heriberto Acevedo, who was killed in a shootout with police on March 23.

The New Generation Jalisco Cartel, which emerged in 2010 when an offshoot of the Sinaloa cartel combined forces with existing local groups, was also blamed for an attack on March 19 that ended the lives of five Federal Police.