Thousands of soldiers on Friday retook control of the city of Culiacan in northwestern Mexico, the scene of war scenes the day before after the capture of Ovidio Guzman, son of notorious drug lord “El Chapo” in an operation that killed 29 people.
Nearly 4,500 soldiers patrol the streets of the city of 800,000 inhabitants and its environs after the offensive launched by the Sinaloa cartel to try to prevent the capture of one of its alleged 32-year-old leaders.
“The situation has been calm in the last few hours,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador said during his daily news conference.
“Ten soldiers (…) sadly lost their lives in service,” Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said, adding that there were also “19 deaths” among suspected criminals.
Another 35 soldiers were wounded by bullets, while 21 people were arrested during this operation which, according to the authorities, did not cause any casualties among the population.
Among the victims was a senior army officer, Sandoval said, adding that his patrol had been attacked following the arrest of a man who calls himself “El Raton” (“the Rat”), accused of lead a faction linked to the Sinaloa cartel founded four decades ago by his father.
– Emergency landing –
At the scene, uniformed officers remove the dozens of cars and trucks burned Thursday in different parts of the city where heavy firefights were observed up to the airport, hitting an airliner and two army planes shortly before take-off.
The official aircraft “had to make an emergency landing, despite having received a significant number of impacts,” explained the defense secretary. None of these incidents resulted in injuries.
Footage circulating on social media shows passengers cowering to escape bullets and airport workers hiding behind desks.
Suspended on Thursday, flights resumed on Friday.
Ovidio Guzman was transferred aboard an Air Force plane to Mexico City on Thursday.
Images broadcast by local media then showed him, bearded and wearing an orange jacket, boarding a helicopter bound for El Altiplano prison, 90 km from Mexico City.
It is from this same prison that his father escaped in 2015 by riding a motorcycle through a 1.5 km long tunnel dug under the shower of his cell, which is ventilated and lighted and which leads into a building under construction.
The capture of Ovid Guzman comes three days before US President Joe Biden arrives in Mexico. Washington has offered five million dollars for the capture of “Chapo’s” son. Arrested again in 2016, the latter was deported to the United States where he is imprisoned for life.
– extradition –
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard denied on Thursday that the arrest was a gesture by his government towards Washington and ruled out any “express” extradition.
The alleged drug trafficker, wanted by the US authorities for trafficking in cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the United States, in fact obtained a judicial suspension on Friday against immediate extradition.
His arrest is “a not insignificant result on the part of the Mexican authorities”, reacted John Kirby, spokesman for the White House, adding that the United States will continue to work “at full speed” with Mexico in the fight against drug trafficking and in particular against the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The Sinaloa Cartel is considered by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to be the main trafficker of this drug, 50 times more potent than heroin, which has caused many overdose deaths in the United States.
In October 2019, “El Raton” was briefly arrested, then released on the orders of President Obrador after a violent riot in Culiacan following his arrest. The president had justified this criticized decision, claiming that a bloodbath had been avoided.
Obrador stressed that this time the operation was carried out on the outskirts of the city and not in the center so as not to endanger the population.
