Mexican police attacked in ambush

One policeman died and three were wounded in an ambush in a Mexican state along the US border that is ravaged by drug cartel violence, AFP reports citing officials.

Gunmen attacked the officers in a drive-by shooting while they were patrolling a highway in the city of Reynosa in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, the state government said in a news release.

It said no arrests have been made.

Tamaulipas, the state that accounts for most of Mexico's international trade, is enduring a wave of drug-related violence that has left more than 100 people dead since the beginning of April.

Authorities blame the bloodshed on fighting between the rival Golfo and Los Zetas cartels and on internal fighting within them following the recent arrests of some of their leaders.

Meanwhile, in another drug-plagued state, Michoacan in the west, hundreds of armed vigilantes rolled into the village of La Mira, despite a deal with the government to disband.

Vigilante groups rose up in February of last year to take on a cartel called the Knights Templar.

They said the government was doing nothing to fight the cartel's acts of extortion, kidnapping and murder.

They had signed a deal with the government to demobilize and register their weapons as of May. From then on, the government said it would not tolerate vigilante groups.

It gave the self-defense group members the option of joining a rural police force. Several thousand of the 20,000 that make up all the self-defense groups in the state did so.

Still, an estimated 600 renegades rolled into La Mira on Thursday. Their leader, Jose Manuel Mireles, said they were acting on reports of kidnappings and the existence of a mass grave in the village with more than 30 bodies.

A Michoacan state official confirmed the arrival of vigilantes in the village.