REYNOSA, Tamaulipas – Two Mexican police officers sustained injuries during a local Gulf Cartel ambush this week.

The attack on the officers took place on Monday shortly after 5 a.m. near the Libramiento 2 highway on the city’s south side, information provided to Breitbart Texas by Tamaulipas authorities revealed. The officers were responding to a report of shootouts when Gulf Cartel gunmen began firing. The gunmen deployed dozens of makeshift road spikes which blew out the police vehicle’s tires. One officer was shot in the leg while the other sustained undisclosed injuries.

The gunmen managed to flee through a series of dirt roads despite a manhunt in response. The attack on Tamaulipas state police comes at a time when the border cities of Reynosa and Rio Bravo are seeing a spike in violence as rival factions of the Gulf Cartel continue to fight for control of drug and human smuggling routes into Texas.

Late last week, Rio Bravo, the border city immediately south of Donna, Texas, came to a standstill as the Gulf Cartel and police clashed. The gunmen stole several vehicles to block roads. Rio Bravo is currently controlled by a rival Gulf Cartel faction that uses the city as a launching pad to send hitmen into Reynosa.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.A. Espinoza” from Tamaulipas.