MEXICO CITY – Authorities in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon arrested 10 people, including several cops, for the killing of an army general turned police chief and four of his bodyguards, the state Attorney General’s Office said Friday.

The slayings took place Wednesday in the town of Garcia, a suburb of the business and industrial hub of Monterrey.

Garcia Mayor Jaime Rodriguez Calderon said a group of about 30 gunmen came to his house with the aim of intimidating him into cooperating with organized crime.

The gunmen left the mayor’s residence, but word of the visit reached police chief Arturo Esparza Garcia, a 63-year-old retired army brigadier general, who headed to the house with four of his bodyguards to help Rodriguez Calderon.

The police chief and his men came across the gunmen, who opened fire on the officers, killing all five of them.

Esparza Garcia served nearly four decades in the army and was a member of the security details of former Presidents Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo.

The 10 suspects arrested for the crime include several police officers, two minors and former mayoral hopeful Norberto Jaime Treviño.

Nuevo Leon’s attorney general, Alejandro Garza, said Treviño organized the incident at Rodriguez Calderon’s home after the mayor admonished him about some questionable land deals.

Angry about the rebuke, Treviño sought out local hotelier Victor Gomez, said to have contacts with the band of hired guns known as “Los Zetas,” and asked him to recruit some men to put a “scare” into the mayor, Garza said.

Los Zetas, founded by veterans of elite Mexican special forces units, functions as the armed wing of the Gulf drug cartel, but is also active in extortion and contract killings.

Some 15,000 people have died in Mexico since newly inaugurated President Felipe Calderon declared all-out war on the cartels in December 2006.

Given the rampant corruption in municipal and even state police forces, Calderon has given the army and the federal police the leading role in the struggle. EFE