The Gendarmerie in Mexico.

Suspected gang members ambushed a police convoy in one of the deadliest attacks on police in Mexico since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012.

Ten people were killed including five members of Mexico’s new militarized police, three suspects and two bystanders in a shootout on Thursday night in Ocotlan, Jalisco state according to the National Security Commission.

President Enrique Pena Nieto’s first promise was to bring peace to Mexico when he took office in 2012. The Gendarmerie are a 5000-strong unit modeled after European military-like forces and was created last summer to restore order in the region.

According to a police statement the officers were on patrol at around 9.15 pm when a vehicle approached the convoy and “without uttering a word, one of the individuals pulled out a large weapon and shot at the federal agents.”

At least 10 vehicles took part in the ambush; the assailants fired with high-powered rifles before being beaten back and then fleeing.

Seven firearms and four fragmentation grenades we confiscated at the scene, as well as five vehicles believed to have belonged to the attackers, the police said.

The area has been troubled with fighting between the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel and the Knights Templar, a neighboring drug gang of Michoacan that has been gradually threatened by the killing or capture of its leaders.

In the past eight years more than 100,000 people have been killed in gang-related violence in Mexico.