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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Drug cartel gunmen ambushed three SUVs along a dirt road, slaughtering six children and three women — all U.S. citizens living in northern Mexico — in a grisly attack that left one vehicle a burned-out, bullet-riddled hulk, authorities said Tuesday.

The dead included 8-month-old twins. Eight youngsters were found alive after escaping from the vehicles and hiding in the brush, but at least five had gunshot wounds or other injuries and were taken to the U.S. for treatment, officials said.

One woman was killed after she apparently jumped out of her vehicle and waved her hands to show she wasn’t a threat, according to family members and prosecutors.

Mexican Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said the gunmen may have mistaken the group’s large SUVs for those of rival gangs.

The bloodshed took place Monday in a remote, mountainous area in northern Mexico where the Sinaloa cartel has been engaged in a turf war. The victims had set out to visit relatives in Mexico; one woman was headed to the airport in Phoenix to meet her husband.

While a drug-related violence has been raging for years in Mexico, the attack underscored the way cartel gunmen have become increasingly unconcerned about killing children as collateral damage. Around the ambush scene, which stretched for miles, investigators found over 200 shell casings, mostly from assault rifles.

“Lately it’s getting worse. This is a whole new level,” said Taylor Langford, a relative of the dead who splits his time between the Mexican community and his home in the Salt Lake City suburb of Herriman, Utah.

In a tweet, President Donald Trump offered to help Mexico “wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.” But Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected that approach, saying his predecessors waged war, “and it didn’t work.”

The victims lived in Sonora state, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Douglas, Arizona, in the hamlet of La Mora, which was founded decades ago by an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many La Mora residents call themselves Mormons but are not affiliated with the church.

A number of such American farming communities are clustered around the Chihuahua-Sonora state border. Many members were born in Mexico and have dual citizenship. While some of the splinter groups were once polygamous, many no longer are.

All of the victims were apparently related to the extended LeBaron family in Chihuahua, whose members have run afoul of the drug traffickers over the years. Benjamin LeBaron, an anti-crime activist who founded neighborhood patrols against cartels, was killed in 2009.

Prosecutors said the woman who waved her arms, Christina Langford Johnson, was found 15 yards (meters) away from her Suburban van, shot to death. Her 7-month-old daughter, Faith Marie Johnson, was discovered uninjured in her car seat.

Kendra Miller, a relative, wrote that the baby’s car seat “seemed to be put on the floor by her mother to try and protect her. … She gave her life to try and save the rest.”

A short distance away, Dawna Ray Langford, 43, lay dead in the front seat of another Suburban, along with the bullet-riddled bodies of her sons, ages 11 and 2.

Of the children who escaped, one had been shot in the face, another in the foot. One girl suffered gunshot wounds to her back and foot.

Cowering in the brush, one boy hid the other children and then walked back to La Mora to get help. Another girl, who was initially listed as missing, walked off in another direction, despite her gunshot wounds, to get help.

A group of male relatives set out to try to rescue the youngsters but turned back when they heard gunfire ahead.

A relative of the dead who did not want his name used for fear of retaliation said in an interview that when they finally made it to the scene where the ambush started — about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from where the two other mothers were killed — they found a burned-out Chevy Tahoe.

Inside, they saw the charred remains of Rhonita Miller, 30, her 10-year-old daughter, a son, 12, and her 8-month-old twins. They were “burnt to a crisp,” the relative said.

The gunmen had riddled the vehicle with dozens of bullets and apparently hit the gas tank, causing it to explode.

“When we were there, the cartels from Sonora, there were probably 50 or 60 of them, armed to the teeth, about a mile on this side,” said the relative.

Trump tweeted that a “wonderful family” got “caught between two vicious drug cartels.”

He said the U.S. “stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” adding, “The cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”

But Mexico’s president said: “The worst thing you can have is war.”

Later, the two leaders spoke by telephone, and Trump offered U.S. assistance “to ensure the perpetrators face justice,” the White House said without giving details.

It was the second failure in recent weeks for López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” anti-crime strategy. Two weeks ago, Mexican forces seized a son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman but had to release him after cartel henchmen launched a furious counterattack in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

Prosecutors on Tuesday said a suspect was detained near Agua Prieta, but it was unclear whether the person had taken part in the ambush. The suspect had assault rifles and a .50-caliber sniper rifle and was holding two bound kidnap victims, authorities said.

The 2009 killing of Benjamin LeBaron marked a watershed in Mexico’s 2006-12 drug war. Gunmen tortured him in front of his family, then killed him and his brother-in-law.

But those killings — which sparked a further crackdown on cartels — also showed how much worse things have become: No children were killed back then.

In August in Chihuahua, cartel gunmen fired 123 bullets at a man and also killed three girls, ages 4, 13 and 14.

Taylor Langford said after Monday’s bloodshed: “I would like to see the government actually step in and do something about the cartels rather than back down every time they wave their guns at us.”

Gubernatorial and legislative elections in four states Tuesday will test voter enthusiasm and party organization amid impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump and a fevered Democratic presidential primary scramble.

Results in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia won’t necessarily predict whether Trump will be reelected or which party will control Congress after the general election next fall. But partisans of all stripes invariably will use these odd-year elections for clues about how voters are reacting to the impeachment saga and whether the Republican president is losing ground among suburban voters who rewarded Democrats in the 2018 midterms and will prove critical again next November.

Trump is eager to nationalize whatever happens, campaigning Monday evening in Kentucky for embattled Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, a first-term Trump ally, as he tries to withstand Democrat Andy Beshear, the attorney general whose father was the state’s last Democratic governor. The president campaigned Friday in Mississippi, trying to boost Republican Tate Reeves in a tight governor’s race against Democrat Jim Hood. Reeves is lieutenant governor; Hood is attorney general.

Legislative seats are on the ballots in New Jersey and in Virginia, with the latter presidential battleground state offering perhaps the best 2020 bellwether. Democrats had a big 2017 in the state, sweeping statewide offices by wide margins and gaining seats in the legislature largely on the strength of a strong suburban vote that previewed how Democrats would go on to flip the U.S. House a year later. This time, Virginia Democrats are looking to add to their momentum by flipping enough Republican seats to gain trifecta control of the statehouse: meaning the governor’s office and both legislative chambers.

Democrats are looking to maintain their legislative supermajorities in New Jersey and ward off any concerns that Trump and Republicans could widen their reach into Democratic-controlled areas.

Some voters Tuesday tied their decisions to the national atmosphere, particularly the president.

In Kentucky, 73-year-old Vietnam veteran Michael Jennings voted straight Democratic.

Jennings, retired after a career in journalism and state government, said he believes Trump is unfit for office and threatens to undermine the foundation of American democracy.

“If Kentucky can send a small flare up that we’re making the necessary turn, that’s a hopeful sign that would have reverberations far beyond our state,” he said.

Richard Simmons, 63, a butcher from Glen Allen, Virginia, said he voted for GayDonna Vandergriff in the House race because she’s a Republican “which means everything to me, especially now.”

Simmons said he’s a staunch Trump supporter and thinks the impeachment investigation is unfounded.

“It’s one diversion after another to keep Trump from doing anything,” he said. “He’s helped the economy, like, bigtime. And I trust the guy. ”

The Kentucky and Mississippi races are expected to be closer than the states’ usual partisan leanings would suggest, though that has as much to do with local dynamics as with national trends.

Bevin’s first term as Kentucky governor has been marked by pitched battles against state lawmakers — including Republicans — and teachers. Beshear, meanwhile, is well-known as state attorney general and the son of Steve Beshear, who won two terms as governor even as the state trended more solidly Republican in federal elections.

Given Bevin’s weakness, Trump would claim a big victory if the governor manages a second term. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who easily defeated Bevin in a 2014 Senate primary, also has a vested interest in the outcome. McConnell is favored to win reelection next year in Kentucky, even as national Democrats harbor hopes of defeating him. And the powerful senator would quell some of those hopes with a Bevin victory.

In Mississippi, Republicans have controlled the governor’s office for two decades. But Phil Bryant is term-limited, leaving two other statewide officials to battle for a promotion. Reeves and Republicans have sought to capitalize on the state’s GOP leanings with the Democrat Hood acknowledging that he voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. Hood would need a high turnout of the state’s African American voters and a better-than-usual share of the white vote to pull off the upset.

Virginia is where national Democrats are putting much of their attention.

For this cycle, the DNC has steered $200,000 to the state party for its statewide coordinated campaign effort that now has 108 field organizers and 16 other field staffers in what the party describes as its largest-ever legislative campaign effort. At the DNC, Perez and his aides bill it as a preview of what they’re trying to build to combat the fundraising and organizing juggernaut that the Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection campaign are building in battleground states.

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AP National Political Writer Steve Peoples in New York contributed to this report.

NEW CASTLE, Pa. (AP) — An election official in Pennsylvania didn’t think anything of the absentee ballot application until he saw the out-of-this-world voting location.

The New Castle News reports that the application to Lawrence County’s voter services department listed the location as “International Space Station, low Earth orbit.”

Director Ed Allison says his reaction was “What?” But then he found out that astronaut Andrew “Drew” Morgan, currently on the space station, has an address in Neshannock Township and is a registered voter in the county.

County IT director Rick DiBello set up a secure email and password and a fillable PDF file that Morgan received, filled it out and sent back.

DiBello says he thought “that is pretty cool.” And Allison calls it “very, very cool” — and he adds: “This is the future.”