Shootouts in northern Mexico kill 3 police officers and 4 drug cartel suspects

MEXICO CITY -- Three state police officers and four drug cartel suspects were killed in a running series of shootouts in the northern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas, across the border from Texas, officials said Wednesday.

Another five police officers were wounded in the series of confrontations along highways around the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas.

Drug cartel gunmen set up road blockades and attacked police patrols in the area Tuesday, and later in the day again attacked a funeral convoy of cars accompanying the body of one of the victims in the first attack.

The office of the state security spokesman confirmed the deaths on Wednesday, but there was no immediate information on the condition of the wounded officers.

San Fernando is a town about midway between the state capital, Ciudad Victoria, and the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa.

San Fernando was the scene of some of the grisliest violence of Mexico's drug war between 2010 and 2011. In those years, drug cartel gunmen massacred 72 migrants, many from Central America, and killed about 122 bus passengers. Those victims were pulled off passing buses and forced to fight each other to the death with sledgehammers.

Tamaulipas has long been dominated by the Gulf cartel and the old Zetas cartel, now known as the Cartel del Noreste.

Also Wednesday, cartel suspects in another border state, Sonora, killed a detective and wounded two others in an attack Wednesday that included the suspects ramming a police vehicle.

The confrontation played occurred early Wednesday on a road that leads to the border town of Sasabe, west of Nogales, Arizona. A Mexican marine was was also injured in the attack. All the injured were listed in stable condition.

Authorities were chasing an SUV driving with its lights off on a rural road when the suspects rammed first the detectives' patrol vehicles and then a Mexican marines' unit before opening fire. Marines and detectives returned fire, killing three suspects.

The area is a hub for smuggling migrants and drugs.