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22 dead following Mexico clashes
20 armed gang members have died in clashes with police in Mexico's Michoacan state, officials say.
Two police officers were also killed in shootouts that started after gang members blocked roads with vehicles and ambushed police patrols.
The powerful Knights Templar drug cartel controls large parts of the western state.
In May, President Enrique Pena Nieto sent in a general to take over police and military operations there.
Wednesday's clashes come amid intensified fighting between the drug cartel and federal police in recent weeks.
Self-defence vigilante groups have also formed in several towns vowing to fight the violence, kidnappings and extortion carried out by drug cartels.
"We have two federal police killed, 20 presumed criminals shot dead and another 15 people under arrest," the interior ministry said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Mexican marines captured one of the world's most notorious drug-gang leaders, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales.
The Zetas leader is the highest-profile arrest since President Nieto took office last December, promising a stricter clamp down on cartels through law enforcement at a local level.
Some 60,000 people have died across Mexico since 2006 when the previous government under Felipe Calderon deployed the military against the drugs gangs.
