At least 29 people have died during the day of violence unleashed on Thursday in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa after the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, one of the sons of “Chapo” Guzmán most wanted by the United States.
The Secretary of Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, pointed out that of the 29 deceased, a dozen belonged to the Mexican Armed Forces and 19 to the criminal groups that generated the violent disturbances. Sandoval was pleased that, according to current information, no innocent civilians lost their lives.
“Ten soldiers lost their lives in the line of duty in order to guarantee security. The Mexican State will give them funeral honors,” he said at the daily press conference of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Regarding the balance of wounded, the person in charge of the Army counted 35 soldiers.
21 members of organized crime were also arrested, Sandoval detailed.
Ovidio López’s bodyguards confronted the National Guard with large-caliber machine guns, which required the intervention of a Black Hawk helicopter to neutralize the drug trafficker’s security teams.
The drug traffickers fired at one of the military aircraft and forced it into a forced landing, although the pilot’s expertise prevented the crew from suffering a major mishap.
In the operation during and after the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán in the early hours of last Thursday, 3,586 members of the Armed Forces participated, who had to face the violence unleashed in the streets of Culiacán (capital of Sinaloa) and cities such as Los Mochis or Mazatlán.
López Obrador stressed that the Government acted in a “responsible” manner to “take care of the civilian population and that there were no innocent victims.” In addition, he added that the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha, informed him that the situation in the region is normalizing, after suffering a day of blockades, attacks with firearms, and vehicles set on fire.
The events in Sinaloa have aroused fear among citizens because they are reminiscent of the controversial “culiacanazo”, an operation in which federal forces arrested Ovidio on October 17, 2019, but released him hours later for violent acts by the Sinaloa cartel.
Ovidio Guzmán was transferred Thursday night to the Federal Center for Social Readaptation (Cefereso) number 1 Altiplano -also known as the Almoloya prison-, located in the State of Mexico, where his father was detained and from which he escaped in 2015.
All this happens days before the visit of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, on the occasion of the North American Leaders Summit