29 killed in Mexico's operation to arrest son of El Chapo

The Mexican government on Friday revealed that 10 soldiers and 19 criminal suspects had been killed in the raid to capture the son of jailed cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Washington says 32-year-old Ovidio Guzman, nicknamed "El Raton" (The Mouse), has helped run the family's criminal operation since Mexico extradited his father to the United States in 2017.

What's the latest information?

Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said security forces had arrested 21 suspects in the Thursday operation to detain Guzman in the northwestern city of Culiacan.

"Ten members of the military... unfortunately lost their lives in the line of duty," Sandoval told a press conference, adding that 19 "lawbreakers" were also killed in the operation.

The minister said the arrests came at the end of six months of intelligence work into the group's "illicit activities."

He said Guzman was being held in the high-security Altiplano prison in central Mexico. 

Some 35 soldiers sustained gunshot wounds in fighting across Culiacan between members of the Sinaloa cartel and Mexican security forces.

Police told city residents not to leave their homes as they set up street blockades and the military deployed armored vehicles.

Sandoval described a dramatic shootout at a local airport damaging three planes and sowing terror at a local airport.

Cartel members launched a furious offensive to rescue their captured boss, hitting a passenger plane and two Mexican Air Force aircraft.

The military planes "had to make an emergency landing" after receiving "a significant number of impacts," Sandoval said, but there were no injuries because of the plane attacks.

The military is to maintain an enhanced security presence in Sinaloa, with an additional 1,000 military personnel traveling to the region on Friday.

Experts bracing for 'more violence' after arrest

Local media reported officials around the area where Guzman was arrested, as well as several neighboring states have been put on high alert.

"We're actually expecting that there will be more violence to come," Laura Carlsen, the director of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy in Mexico City, told DW.

"We know this because of the pattern of violence in other situations, similar situations throughout the history of the war on drugs here in Mexico," she said. "There's almost inevitably an uptick in the violence, both localized and eventually on a national level."

She and other experts believe the arrest will also have "no substantial" effect on illicit drug flows to the US.

With US President Joe Biden soon set to visit Mexico for talks, the timing of the arrest is especially significant.

"This was timed to be really a gift to Joe Biden," Carlsen said, noting that the Mexican government would be able to use the arrest as "leverage" in some of the negotiations.

"But it's not a good calculation for the populations themselves," she said.

 

Who is Ovidio Guzman?

United States authorities had issued a reward of up to $5 million (about €4.75 million) for information leading to Ovidio Guzman's capture, accusing him of playing a leading role in the infamous Sinaloa cartel.

The US State Department accuses Guzman and one of his brothers of presiding over nearly a dozen methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa, and for overseeing the distribution of cocaine and marijuana.

Ovidio was captured briefly once before in 2019 but was freed by security forces after the cartel launched an all-out assault against them in response.

That failed operation came just months after his father, "El Chapo" or "Shorty" Guzman, was sentenced to life in prison in the US. He had been found guilty of trafficking hundreds of tons of drugs into the US over some 25 years. However, his cartel remains one of the most powerful in Mexico.

The swoop came as Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador prepared to welcome his US counterpart Joe Biden for a North America leaders' summit next week.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also set to attend the event, at which security is expected to be high on the agenda.

rc/aw (AFP, dpa)