MEXICO CITY – Gunmen helped a suspect being taken to a hospital in Tampico, a port city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, to escape from a Red Cross ambulance, a spokesman for the humanitarian organization said.

The ambulance was intercepted Monday by gunmen in two vehicles, a Red Cross spokesman told Efe, adding that about 10 masked men were involved in the incident.

“While the unit was traveling on Carlos Canseco and Alvaro Obregon streets, they were intercepted by two late-model SUVs, which caused the ambulance to crash into a light pole,” the Red Cross spokesman said.

The gunmen overpowered the police officers guarding the suspect.

“Fortunately, nothing happened to our colleagues,” the Red Cross spokesman said.

Tampico police cordoned off the area where the incident occurred.

The Mexican Red Cross called Monday on “those groups operating on the fringes of the law” to avoid attacking its personnel in the wake of the killing of one of the organization’s volunteers in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state.

Maria Genoveva Rogers Lozoya, a 20-year-old dispatcher, was killed when gunmen finishing off a wounded man opened fire inside the Red Cross building in Culiacan.

The incident at the Red Cross facility occurred on Sunday.

Sinaloa, the birthplace of many of Mexico’s drug lords, is controlled by Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel, but other criminal organizations have been fighting for control of smuggling routes into the United States that run through the state.

Gunmen have finished off people at medical facilities several times in recent years in some of Mexico’s most violent cities, especially Tijuana, a border city located near San Diego, California.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence blamed on powerful cartels.

Last year, according to the El Universal newspaper, was the deadliest in Mexico in the past decade, with 7,724 people killed in violent incidents attributed to organized crime groups.

So far this year, drug-related violence has claimed the lives of more than 1,400 people, the daily says. EFE