The operation to detain Ovidio Guzman, the son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, unleashed firefights that turned the northern city of Culiacan into a war zone with 30 dead, authorities said on Friday.
In a blow-by-blow description of the battles on Thursday that killed 10 military personnel and 19 suspected members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Mexican Secretary of National Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval said cartel members opened fire on troops with a half-dozen .50 caliber machine guns.
The army responded by calling in Blackhawk helicopter gunships to attack a convoy of 25 cartel vehicles, including truck-mounted cartel gun platforms.
Photo: AFP
The running shootouts also killed one Culiacan policeman, while 17 police officers and 35 military personnel were wounded.
The cartel then opened fire on the military aircraft, forcing two of them down with “a significant number of impacts” in each of the two aircraft, Sandoval said.
The gang then sent hordes of armed members to attack fixed-wing aircraft, military and civilian, at the city’s international airport. One civilian airliner was hit. They also shot up airport buildings in a bid to prevent authorities from flying the captured cartel boss out of the city.
However, authorities anticipating the resistance had loaded Ovidio Guzman onto a military helicopter to fly him back to Mexico City, Sandoval said.
The Mexican administration bagged the high-profile cartel figure days before hosting US President Joe Biden.
Samuel Gonzalez, who founded Mexico’s special prosecutor’s office for organized crime in the 1990s, said that Guzman’s capture was a “gift” ahead of Biden’s visit.
The Mexican government “is working to have a calm visit,” he said.
Juan Carlos Ayala, a Culiacan resident and Sinaloa University professor who studies the sociology of drug trafficking, said Ovidio Guzman had been an obvious target for years.
“Ovidio’s fate had been decided. Moreover, he was identified as the biggest trafficker of fentanyl and the most visible Chapos leader,” he said.
Ayala said the atmosphere was calmer on Friday, “but there are still a lot of burned-out vehicles blocking the streets.”
The scope of Thursday’s violence was such that Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha said armed cartel members showed up at hospitals, trying to abduct doctors and take them away to treat wounded fighters.
“It got to the point that at one moment the doctors were saying: ‘We’re getting out of here,’” Rocha said, adding that police reinforced security and convinced the doctors to stay.
Culiacan residents posted video footage on social media showing convoys of cartel members in pickup trucks and SUVs rolling down boulevards in the city on Thursday. At least one convoy included a flatbed truck with a mounted gun in the back.
Unlike a failed 2019 attempt to arrest Ovidio Guzman — the government said it had to release him to avoid further bloodshed — this time around there were fewer civilian casualties. Just one 14-year-old boy was shot, but is expected to survive.
While most people stayed in their homes on Thursday, by Friday people were starting to go back out on the streets, Culiacan Chamber of Commerce director Victor Medrano said. “There is still some fear ... but as they day goes on, there are greater number of people out.”
The Pentagon is bolstering its presence in the Middle East with ships, fighter planes and ballistic missile defense vessels as Israel faces threats from Iran to avenge assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. The moves announced on Friday by the US Department of Defense came a day after the White House said that US President Joe Biden promised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the US would provide new “defensive US military deployments.” The deployments include sending additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the US European and Central Command regions, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement on Friday.
The Burmese military withdrew from some positions close to China’s border to prioritize the “safety of people,” the junta chief said, days after an alliance of ethnic armed groups said they had routed state troops in the area. Shan State in eastern Myanmar has been rocked by fighting since late June when the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) renewed an offensive against the military along a major trade highway to China. “With regard to the situation of Shan State, security forces withdrew their positions by considering the security of current areas and safety of people,” Min Aung Hlaing said in a
HUGE: The Park Fire, which has destroyed more than 162,200 hectares, was allegedly started by a man who was charged on suspicion of pushing a flaming car down a gully More than 6,000 firefighters in California’s Central Valley on Saturday continued to battle the largest blaze in the US, which burned its way into the history books as the state’s fourth-largest conflagration on record. There was barely a taste of rain on Saturday from thunderstorms that brought wind and rainfall of zero to 2.5mm, forecasters said. Heat of 38°C along with winds up to 40kph or more in some spots, offered little relief to the firefighters trying to contain the Park Fire, scorching the wilderness terrain about 161km north of Sacramento, the state capital. “We had some thunderstorms that just brought us
DEADLIEST DAY: At least 94 people died on Sunday, including 14 police officers, many of whom were killed when protesters stormed a station in Enayetpur Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule of the nation ended yesterday as she fled weeks of deadly protests and the military announced it would form an interim government. Hasina since early last month had sought to quell nationwide protests against her government, but she fled after a brutal day of unrest on Sunday in which nearly 100 people died. In a broadcast to the nation on state television, Bangladesh army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman said that Hasina had resigned and the military would form an interim government. “The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed —