More than 40 die in Mexico shootings

More than 40 people have been killed in what authorities said was a fierce battle between suspected drug gang gunmen and government forces on a ranch in western Mexico.

All the dead were suspected criminals except for one police officer, who died trying to help a colleague wounded in the shoot-out, national security commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.

Photographs showed bodies, some with semi-automatic rifles, lying in fields, near farm equipment and on a patio.

Video showed police coming under fire and bodies strewn throughout a ranch, known as Rancho del Sol.

Mr Rubido said the suspects were members of "a criminal organisation operating in Jalisco state". He did not mention the Jalisco New Generation, the drug cartel that dominates the area where the battle erupted and has grown rapidly in recent years to become one of Mexico's biggest organised crime groups.

The confrontation started in the district of Tanhauto, on the border between Jalisco and Michoacan states, when soldiers, police and state and federal investigators responded to a report of the sudden appearance of armed men on a ranch.

During the operation, federal forces encountered a truck full of armed men who opened fire and when they chased the gunmen on to the ranch, they came under heavy fire by others.

“The rest of the presumed criminals on the property started to attack with intensity,” Mr Rubido said.

The federal force called for air and ground support, which included a police helicopter. The size of the 277-acre ranch complicated the battle, which lasted for three hours.

So far authorities have detained three people and confiscated 36 semi-automatic weapons, two smaller arms, a grenade launcher that had been fired and a .50-calibre rifle.

PA