Mexican authorities have captured Ovidio Guzman, the son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, prompting a furious response from cartel gunmen in the northern city of Culiacán.
After a night of violence, gunmen exchanged fire with security forces, blocking roads with burning vehicles and shooting at army helicopters and police planes carrying reinforcements into the city.
According to one resident, the heavy fighting lasted hours after Guzmán, a key figure in the Sinaloa cartel since the arrest of his father, was arrested early Thursday.
“They took him around 4 in the morning, and since then the shooting has not stopped. It’s been a real mess – they’re shooting themselves in the air trying to bring it down [police] helicopters The whole town is a disaster,” said the neighbor.
Cartel members also reportedly captured a Red Cross ambulance, brought medical personnel from hospitals to treat injured colleagues, threatened journalists and confiscated press vehicles.
Guzmán was briefly detained in 2019 by security forces, but quickly released after a violent response from the gang in an episode that became a major embarrassment for the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
His recapture comes just days before a summit of US leaders in Mexico City next week, which will be attended by Joe Biden and where security issues are high on the agenda.
One of the Mexican officials said Guzmán’s arrest would likely prove a welcome addition to US-Mexico security cooperation ahead of Biden’s visit.
The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Guzmán’s arrest or conviction.
The rise in overdose deaths in the United States, fueled by the synthetic opioid fentanyl, has increased pressure on Mexico to crack down on organizations, such as the Sinaloa cartel, responsible for producing and shipping the drug.
For Tomás Guevara, a security expert at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Guzmán’s arrest helps Mexican law enforcement save face after the humiliation of having to let El Chapo’s son go in 2019 .
“Ovidio’s arrest is finally the culmination of something that was planned three years ago,” he said.
It could also herald a change in government approach, Guevara added, following criticism from many security experts that López Obrador had gone soft on the cartels, a charge he denies.
The president argues that the confrontational tactics of his predecessors were unsuccessful and only led to more bloodshed, and said he would pursue a strategy of “hugs, not bullets.”
On Thursday morning, security forces were trying to contain a violent reaction to the arrest in the Culiacán area by Guzmán’s associates, the same official said.
The city’s airport was closed and will remain so until Thursday night, he said on Twitter.
The local government urged people to stay indoors and said schools and administrative offices were closed due to the violence. Unverified videos on social media appeared to show heavy gunfire, including helicopters at night. There were also street blockades.
“We ask the citizens of Culiacán not to leave their homes due to the blockades that have occurred in different parts of the city,” the mayor of Culiacán, Juan de Dios Gámez, wrote on Twitter.
Joaquín Guzmán, 65, was convicted in New York in 2019 of trafficking billions of dollars of drugs into the United States and conspiring to kill enemies. He is serving a life sentence at Colorado’s Supermax, America’s most secure federal prison.
Reuters contributed to this report