- Title: "Failure:" Mexico admits bungled arrest of kingpin's son after mayhem
- Date: 18th October 2019
- Summary: FORENSICS COLLECTING DEAD BODIES LYING IN STREET
- Embargoed: 1st November 2019 20:33
- Keywords: Mexican officials admitted they had bungled the arrest jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's son shootouts drug gangs streets major city
- Location: CULIACAN, SINALOA, MEXICO
- City: CULIACAN, SINALOA, MEXICO
- Country: Mexico
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Crime,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA002B1MH4QV
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES IN SHOTS #2 AND #11
Mexican officials on Friday (October 18) admitted they had bungled the arrest of jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's son, who they let go amidst shootouts with drug gangs in the streets of a major city, but the president insisted his security strategy was working.
Cartel gunmen surrounded security forces in the northwestern city of Culiacan on Thursday (October 17) and made them free Ovidio Guzman, one of the drug lord's dozen children, after his brief capture set off widespread gun battles and a jailbreak that stunned the country.
The chaos in Culiacan, a bastion of Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel, raised pressure on President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office in December promising to pacify a country weary of more than a decade of gang violence.
Lopez Obrador has come under heavy criticism on social media and among security experts, who said that authorities risked encouraging copycat actions by caving in to the gang, and that retreat from a major city created the impression that the cartel, not the state, was in control.
His own officials said the operation had not been planned as well as it should have been.
Security Minister Alfonso Durazo, said people's lives were more important than capturing a criminal.
The violent reaction to Guzman's detention was on a scale rarely seen during Mexico's long drug war, even after his more famous father's arrests.
Authorities said he had reports of at least eight people killed, including five suspected gang members, in Culiacan, a city of nearly 1 million people in Sinaloa state.
(Production: Jesus Bustamante, Manuel Carrillo) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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