It is now a real guerrilla war that has broken out in the State of Sinaloa, in Mexico, after the arrest of the son of "El Chapo" , Ovidio Guzman Lopez.
Cars torched, Culiacan International Airport closed after being overrun by insurgents. Seven officers also died in the clashes .
The government mobilized armored personnel carriers on the streets stormed by armed members of drug cartels .
Images show cars reduced to fireballs and huge plumes of black smoke in the sky. According to the governor of the state, Ruben Rocha, 7 members of the security forces were killed, 21 agents and 8 civilians were injured .
The balance of the clashes for the arrest of Guzman, known as "El Raton", arrived at the end of a very violent firefight with the narcos was also very heavy. 29 people, 10 officers and 19 criminal suspects died in the operation, the government said .
"Ten members of the army unfortunately lost their lives in the line of duty," Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters.
Guzman will not be extradited soon to the United States which requires him to try him, because the formalities required by Mexican law will have to be completed first. In statements to the press, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed that the request for extradition exists but explained in this regard that "we could not extradite him today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, because we must respect the formalities that the law imposes on us" .
With his father serving a life sentence in the US, Guzman had long controlled the Sinaloa Cartel along with his brothers.
"El Raton" had already been arrested in October 2019, but on that occasion the national government authorities decided to release him after very violent reprisals by the cartel men who set the city on fire . The episode, known as "Culiacanazo" , ended with the deaths of seven agents and a civilian, and with the escape of 47 inmates from the city jail at the end of a revolt led by drug traffickers.
Guzman's subsequent release brought enormous criticism to the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and is remembered as a black page in the fight against drug cartels.
(Unioneonline/L)