Mexican plane hit after drug lord detention
The operation to detain Ovidio Guzman, the son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, unleashed a running firefight in the northern city of Culiacan that killed 10 military personnel and 19 suspected members of the Sinaloa drug cartel. In a blow-by-blow description Friday, Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval described a battle that resembled a war: cartel gunmen opened fire on troops with .50 caliber machine guns, and the army responded by calling in Blackhawk helicopter gunships to attack a convoy of 25 cartel vehicles, including truck-mounted cartel gun platforms. The cartel then opened fire on the military aircraft, forcing two of them down with “a significant number of impacts” in each of the two aircraft, Sandoval said. The gang then sent hordes of gunmen to attack fixed-wing aircraft, both military and civilian, at the city’s international airport. One civilian airliner was hit; the gunmen also shot up airport buildings in a bid to prevent authorities from flying the captured Guzman out of the city.
