The Knights Templar cartel of Michoacan in western Mexico are finding themselves surrounded by large groups of armed citizens as of late. On Monday morning the "autodefensas" had encircled the Templar stronghold city of Apatzingan and were threatening armed incursions into the city.

The Mexican government has moved in to try to diffuse the potentially violent situation.

Late last week the vigilantes had taken over the town of Nueva Italia, roughly 20 miles east of Apatzingan, with some small exchanges of gunfire involved. There were no reports of casualties involved in those firefights.

"We have already circled Apatzingan," self-defense leader Hipolito Mora said via radio according to the LA Times. "I don't know if we have the capacity (to take it) or not, but we are obligated to do it, and we are going to do it."

The Times also reported that an autodefensas spokesman, Estanislao Beltran, said there would be no negotiating with government officials unless top cartel leaders were arrested.

The Telegraph in London is reporting that on Friday, masked men set fire to the municipal building in Apatzingan, a city of some 90,000 residents. All last week, vigilante groups have been active in the smaller towns nearby and control most of the area known as Tierra Caliente (hot country).

One vigilante was reported killed by the Telegraph in a skirmish last Tuesday in the nearby town of Paracuaro, where the vigilantes were said to have taken 11 local police officers into custody. One of the primary complaints of vigilante groups is that local police are often under the control of the cartels.

There is a lot of tension reported in Apatzingan, which is beginning to feel more like a city under siege.

"The people are very worried, there's already a gas shortage ... as well as a number of basic products because there's no way in, there's nothing, everything's blocked off," the mayor, Uriel Chavez Mendoza, said according to the LA Times.

(Vigilantes engage cartel gunman in the small town of Nueva Italia.)