Mexican prosecutors have launched a probe against soldiers over the shooting deaths of six people in a northern state where clashes involving drug cartels are frequent, a judicial source said Tuesday.

The incident occurred on Monday on a highway in Tamaulipas, considered one of Mexico's most dangerous states due to the presence of gang members involved in drug and migrant trafficking.

Numerous violent clashes involving security forces in Tamaulipas have prompted accusations of extrajudicial killings.

The troops involved in the latest deadly incident have been "placed under investigation," an official with the attorney general's office told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A defense ministry statement said the group of soldiers was traveling on a highway when a white pickup truck "tried to ram" one of the army vehicles.

The troops sensed a threat and "used their weapons," the ministry said, adding that five civilians died on the spot and a sixth on the way to hospital.

In March, four Mexican soldiers were sentenced to 40 years in prison for the killing of five civilians in 2023 in Nuevo Laredo, a crime-plagued city bordering the United States.

Public officials have also been targeted in the region. In August, Mexican investigators pointed to organized crime in the killing of a top federal official in Tamaulipas, saying it was likely retaliation for the authorities' recent seizures of stolen fuel there. Gunmen killed Ernesto Vásquez Reyna, the Attorney General's Office Tamaulipas state delegate, in broad daylight in the middle of the busiest avenue of the border city of Reynosa along the Texas border.

Reynosa has been plagued by escalating violence since 2017 due to internal disputes among groups vying for control of drug trafficking, human smuggling and fuel theft.

In May, the bodies of five musicians, members of a Mexican regional music group who had gone missing, were found in the city. Prosecutors said nine people arrested were believed to be part of a faction of the Gulf Cartel.

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