ECUANDUREO, Mexico (AP) — The latest in a series of clashes between Mexican authorities and a powerful, fast-growing drug cartel turned into the deadliest confrontation in recent memory, with 42 suspected gang gunmen and one Federal Police officer killed during a three-hour firefight at a remote western ranch. The battle on Friday followed two other recent unprecedented attacks by the cartel, one that killed 15 state police officers and another that shot down an army helicopter with a rocket launcher for the first time in Mexico's history. The death toll from all three is at least 76 people at a time when the Mexican government claims crime is falling dramatically and the interior minister recently insisted the country "is not in flames." Photographs from the scene showed bodies, some with semi-automatic rifles and others without weapons, lying in fields, next to farm equipment and on a blood-stained patio strewn with clothes, mattresses and sleeping bags. Federal forces on the way to the ranch met a truck full of armed men who opened fire, and when the government force chased the gunmen onto the ranch, they came under heavy fire from others, the security chief said. In just a few years, New Generation has grown from a small faction of the powerful Sinaloa cartel to one of Mexico's strongest criminal groups in its own right, according to the U.S.