MEXICO CITY -- At least 29 people were killed in the battle to arrest alleged drug trafficker Ovidio Guzman, Mexican authorities revealed Friday, underscoring the enduring power of the cartel once dominated by his father, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
Army and national guard troops detained the younger Guzman, 32, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Culiacan on Thursday. Seven soldiers were killed as Sinaloa cartel gunmen fired .50-caliber rifles to fend off troops trying to arrest Guzman and others in an armored convoy, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said at a news conference.
The resistance was so intense that the military had to call in helicopter gunships, he said. All told, 10 soldiers were killed in fighting that broke across Sinaloa state after the arrest, including an army colonel who was ambushed in the town of Escuinapa, about 140 miles south of Culiacan, authorities said. Nineteen alleged cartel fighters were also killed.
Guzman's arrest has been a priority for the U.S. government, which considers him an important fentanyl trafficker and a top figure in the Sinaloa cartel.
"As we can see, the cartel has an enormous paramilitary organization with immense capabilities in terms of logistics and firepower," tweeted Guillermo Valdes Castellanos, a former head of the Mexican domestic intelligence agency, CISEN.
But while the government managed to arrest Guzman, it did not seek to debilitate the cartel's army, he wrote -- allowing the organization to remain intact. The gunmen went on a rampage after the arrest, throwing up roadblocks, attacking the Culiacan airport, and setting buses and cars ablaze. In many cases, they appeared to encounter no resistance from Mexican security forces.
"The operation was a success in terms of the detention of Ovidio, but didn't signify a change in the government's strategy," he tweeted.
Since taking office in 2018, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to end the U.S.-backed "war on drugs" and instead use social programs to lure young people away from organized crime. He said Friday that his government had acted "in a responsible manner, to protect the civilian population, so that there weren't innocent victims."
His public security minister, Rosa Icela Rodriguez, told reporters that the policy hadn't changed but that Guzman's arrest showed that no one was above the law. "We didn't come to win a war; we came to build peace," she said.
Still, the Mexican Defense Ministry had to launch a full-scale military operation to capture Guzman. The government poured more than 3,000 troops into the effort, including paratroops and special forces soldiers, according to Sandoval. An additional 1,000 troops were being deployed to Sinaloa on Friday, he said.
The government had tried to arrest Guzman in 2019. It wound up releasing him after cartel gunmen effectively took control of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, and threatened residents, including the families of military officers.
The Culiacan airport reopened Friday after two Mexican military planes had to make emergency landings Thursday while coming under fire, apparently by gunmen trying to block Guzman's transfer out of the city. An Aeromexico flight to Mexico City was canceled after a bullet punctured the fuselage, sending passengers diving into the aisle for cover.
The government eventually managed to fly Guzman to Mexico City and lock him up in the maximum-security Altiplano prison. His father, El Chapo, famously tunneled his way out of the facility in 2015, escaping through a hole in the floor of his shower. El Chapo was recaptured the following year and extradited to the United States, where he is serving a life sentence.
The younger Guzman's detention came just three days before President Joe Biden is due to arrive in Mexico City for a summit. Many analysts believed the timing was no coincidence. Mexico has become the top source of fentanyl pouring into the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Washington has been urging Lopez Obrador to do more to stop those shipments.
The Mexican leader denied that the arrest was the result of political pressure. "We act with autonomy, with independence," he told reporters. "Yes, there's cooperation, that will continue, but we make our own decisions as a sovereign government."
Ovidio Guzman faces a 2018 indictment from a federal court in Washington on cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana trafficking charges. The U.S. government plans to seek his extradition, but Mexican authorities say the request will have to pass through their judicial system and is not likely to be approved swiftly.
Gallery: Mexico gives account of violence after 'Chapo' son nabbed
