A police commissioner and three officers were killed by armed gunmen on Monday in Guadalajara, the capital of the western state of Jalisco in Mexico, according to police reports.

The gunmen surprised commissioner Eduardo Plazola as he left his home in the Loma Dorada neighborhood in the municipality of Tonala, police said.

Plazola and the three officers, among them a female officer, returned fire and wounded some of the attackers who managed to escape.

"We immediately began to search for the suspects in order to apprehend them, in the process we seized a vehicle believed to have been used in the attack," local police said.

Police officials said the murder of the officers was a response by organized crime over the arrests of several of its members that have taken place over the past few weeks.

"Incidents like these do not deter us, Guadalajara police will continue to work to uphold the rule of law," police said.

Mexican authorities have attributed previous violent incidents in Guadalajara to members of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, which uses the city and other towns in the state as a base of operation.

Among the cases registered so far this year are the failed attempt against the public prosecutor, which left several dead and the disappearance of three film students who were mistakenly kidnapped by the cartel, according to the official version of events.

The attorney general of Mexico considers the Jalisco New Generation cartel the biggest criminal organization in Mexico currently.