This time, the Mexican police pursued his intentions. After a first failed arrest attempt in 2019 due to the risk of an uprising, they proceeded this Thursday to the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán López known as “El Ratón” -“El Ratón” in Spanish-, son of the infamous Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman. Unfortunately, the fears raised three years ago soon came true: drug traffickers took up arms against the army and the police in Culiacán, in the northwest of the country, where the criminal was arrested.
Passengers hiding under the seats of their plane riddled with bullets, street fights: BFMTV.com reviews this Friday the images of this mafia insurrection that convulses Mexico.
Since “El Chapo” or “el chiquito” was arrested for drug trafficking in 2016 and then sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 after his extradition to the United States, it is one of his sons, Ovidio, now 32, who took up the torch. He is also suspected of having inherited from his father the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, a particularly murderous group of drug traffickers founded by the latter 40 years ago.
Command in urban area
As soon as their leader was arrested, they demonstrated that their reputation for violence was not usurped. Clashes between them and the National Guard and the Army in recent hours have resulted in the deaths of at least 29 people according to the government count on Friday, ten from the military side, the rest from the cartel side.
Among the videos of the problems posted online, some give you an idea of the seriousness of the situation. The images below show Mexican soldiers using commando tactics before exchanging gunfire on the arteries of Culiacán with criminals.
Armor on the roads
Other images echo the mobilization of the army. Thus, this video exposing the parade of tanks on the roads.
From the streets, the battle soon took to the skies. Helicopters and other devices were thus aimed at key points of the insurrection.
terror on the plane
An extension of the domain of the conflict in the air that had other dire consequences. Thus, a plane that was preparing to take off from the local airport runway was hit by bullets. The event led authorities to suspend flights. In the following publication, broadcast on Twitter by a journalist from the American ABC network, we can see the terror of the passengers of the aircraft that was attacked. They hide under their seats or in the center aisle.
This escalation recalls the previous police initiative and the reasons for its failure. When the agents wanted to arrest Ovidio Guzmán in October 2019, they gave up before withdrawing from the theater of operations due to the threat of an explosion of violence from the Sinaloa Cartel. Alfonzo Durazo, then Minister of the Interior, tried to justify at the time:
“The decision was made to leave this house without Guzmán to prevent further violence from occurring in the area and to preserve the lives of our staff members and restore calm to the town.”
The Culiacán suburb has approximately one million inhabitants.
Source: BFM TV
