An improvised landmine apparently planted by a drug cartel killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others, Mexico’s defense minister said Tuesday. Before the explosion, soldiers discovered the dismembered bodies of three people, officials said.

Gene. Ricardo Trevilla acknowledged that the military had already suffered six deaths from such improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, between 2018 and 2024. But he did not specify whether the six were killed by bombs dropped from drones or by buried roadside bombs, and both used by gangs in Mexico.

Trevilla said devices like the one that exploded Monday were “very rustic,” and officials have described them in the past as similar to buried pipe bombs. There was no immediate information on the condition of the five wounded in the attack, among whom was at least one officer.

Trevilla’s description of the location where two soldiers died Monday in the western state Michoacan suggested that it might have been some kind of creepy drug cartel trap.

Trevilla said the army sent a patrol to check reports that there was a camp of gunmen in the rural area. The armed forces discovered a fenced area that looked like a camp, but when the soldiers approached in vehicles, they found the path blocked by logs, so they dismounted and had to approach on foot.

As they approached, they spotted three dismembered bodies near the camp, which appeared abandoned. But as they approached, a buried device exploded and hit the soldiers.

Trevillo blamed the explosion on the United Cartels, an umbrella group that includes the local Viagras gang, which has waged bloody battles against the Jalisco cartel in Michoacan for years.

In August, the Mexican army admitted that some of its soldiers had been killed bomb-dropping drones controlled by drug cartels.

Previously, officials said the military was encountering far more roadside bombs than those dropped by drones.

The Jalisco drug cartel has been battling local gangs for control of Michoacan for years, and the situation has become so militarized that warring cartels use roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, pill forts, homemade armored vehicles and sniper rifles.

Nemesio Oseguera-Cervantesalso known as “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco cartel, described by officials as “one of the world’s most violent and prolific drug-trafficking organizations.” The United States and the State Department offered a A prize of 10 million dollars for his capture.

In the only previous one in more detail report on cartel bombings in August 2023, the Ministry of Defense said at the time that a total of 42 soldiers, police officers and suspects were wounded by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.

A total of 556 improvised explosive devices of all types – roadside, drones and car bombs – were found in 2023, the army said in news last year.