A highway gun attack on security forces in northern Mexico has left 10 people dead.

"Civil Force personnel were attacked with bullets by subjects who were traveling aboard three armoured trucks," Nuevo Leon Public Security Secretary Gerardo Palacios wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

Ten criminal suspects were killed and four officers injured in the incident, he added.

The attack took place along a highway between Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states, a region hit by violence connected to organised crime.

Roads between the two states have been the scenes of kidnappings, disappearances and robberies.

Mexico has counted more than 340,000 killings and some 100,000 disappearances –– most attributed to organised criminal gangs –– since the launch of the government's controversial anti-drug operation in 2006.