Ten troopers are amongst these killed throughout arrest of drug kingpin’s son, which sparks violence by cartel, authorities says.
Not less than 29 folks, together with 10 troopers, have been killed in an operation to arrest the son of jailed Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s authorities says after a shootout with cartel members.
Ovidio Guzman, nicknamed “El Raton”, or “The Mouse”, was rounded up early on Thursday within the northern state of Sinaloa and flown to Mexico Metropolis on a army airplane.
“Ten members of the army … sadly misplaced their lives within the line of obligation,” Defence Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval informed reporters on Friday, including 19 “lawbreakers” had been additionally killed within the operation. One other 35 troopers sustained gunshot wounds.
Members of the Sinaloa Cartel and their associates went on a rampage after Ovidio Guzman’s arrest, combating safety forces, setting automobiles on fireplace and blocking roads throughout the Pacific coastal state.
The violence was concentrated in and round Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, residence of the highly effective drug cartel, which “El Chapo” headed earlier than his seize in 2016 and extradition to the US in 2017.
Twenty-one different folks had been arrested throughout Thursday’s operations, Sandoval mentioned throughout a information convention, including there have been no stories of any civilian deaths.
The arrest of Ovidio Guzman, 32, adopted six months of intelligence work to trace him down, the federal government mentioned, and he's now being held at a most safety federal jail.
Sandoval mentioned a passenger airplane that was nearly to take off from Culiacan airport and two air power plane had been hit as members of the Sinaloa Cartel launched the offensive to rescue Ovidio Guzman.
The air power planes “needed to make an emergency touchdown” after receiving “a big variety of impacts”, Sandoval mentioned. Nobody was injured.
An enhanced safety presence will now stay in place in Sinaloa, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, to guard the general public, with an extra 1,000 army personnel travelling to the area at this time, the minister added.
Reporting from Mexico Metropolis, Al Jazeera’s John Holman mentioned the state of affairs in Culiacan appeared to have calmed down on Friday with automobiles driving on the streets once more.
Requested whether or not the youthful Guzman’s arrest would rein within the work of the drug cartels, Holman mentioned previous arrests of leaders have proven that “the technique of knocking out kingpins and hoping that which means the entire construction falls aside has been proven to only not work.”
“What’s occurred on varied totally different events is both it simply carries on, or the organisations splinter into totally different teams,” Holman mentioned.
“El Chapo”, which suggests “Shorty”, is serving a life sentence within the US for trafficking lots of of tonnes of medicine into the nation over the course of 25 years.
Nonetheless, his cartel stays one of the highly effective in Mexico, accused by Washington of exploiting an opioid epidemic by flooding communities with fentanyl, an artificial drug about 50 occasions stronger than heroin.
Ovidio Guzman and one in every of his brothers are accused of overseeing almost a dozen methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa in addition to conspiring to distribute cocaine and marijuana, based on the US Division of State.
He additionally allegedly ordered the murders of informants, a drug trafficker and a Mexican singer who refused to carry out at his marriage ceremony, the division mentioned.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador mentioned there have been no fast plans to extradite Ovidio Guzman to the US.
“The weather [of the case] must be introduced and the judges in Mexico determine,” he mentioned on Friday. “It's a course of … It isn't simply the request.”
Ovidio Guzman was arrested simply days earlier than US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are to satisfy with the Mexican president, often called AMLO, in Mexico Metropolis for 2 days of talks.
Whereas Mexican officers have tried to downplay the timing of the operation, Al Jazeera’s Holman mentioned many observers are sceptical. “Each time one in every of these large conferences occurs, normally the Mexican authorities tries to get some kind of large win – both when it comes to capturing medication or attempting to seize some kind of boss,” he mentioned.
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