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[tw0122]

Mexican Drug Cartel defeats and overpowers the Mexican Army in Sinaloa yesterday as El Chapo’s son is allowed to escape free.

The Mexican government struggled to defend its decision to release the son of Sinaloa cartel leader El Chapo after heavily-armed narcos broke dozens of reinforcements out of prison and turned Culiacan into a bloody war zone.

Previous governments’ strategy “turned this country into a cemetery, and we don’t want that anymore,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Friday, defending his decision to release Ovidio Guzman, one of the sons of notorious incarcerated drug lord El Chapo.

Capturing a criminal can’t be worth more than people’s lives… We don’t want dead people, we don’t want war.

War is what authorities got after national guard and army troops raided a house where Guzman and three associates were staying.


At least eight people were killed and 21 wounded as hundreds of heavily-armed cartel gunmen took the city hostage, blocking off roads with burning vehicles, occupying toll booths, and surrounding the house where some 35 military and police forces had cornered Guzman.


Some 56 prisoners at nearby Aguaruto prison escaped during the chaos, taking guards hostage, seizing their weapons, and commandeering vehicles at gunpoint as they rushed out into the streets. By Friday, 49 were still on the loose.


Numerous videos taken by shocked locals show heavily-armed men riding around in vehicles, some with mounted machine guns, terrorizing the city as civilians dived for shelter. Gun battles raged for hours between the cartel and the government.