An intense gunfight broke out in northern Mexico after security forces captured the son of a drug kingpin who was wanted on drug trafficking charges in the US.
Fighting raged for several hours after Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, was found during a routine patrol in Culiacán.
The city exploded in violence with armed civilians in trucks roaring through the centre, shooting what appeared to be .50-caliber sniper rifles and machine guns.
Videos published on social media showed a scene resembling a war zone, with gunmen, some wearing black ski masks over their faces, riding in the back of trucks, firing mounted machine guns as vehicles burned.
Guzmán was arrested but later released, “to avoid more violence in the area and preserve the lives of our personnel and recover calm in the city”, Mexico’s security minister Alfonso Durazo said.
El Chapo, 62, was found guilty in New York of 10 counts including drug trafficking and money laundering.
He escaped from a Mexican jail through a tunnel in 2015, but was later arrested and extradited to the US in 2017.
El Chapo — meaning shorty in Spanish — was the biggest supplier of drugs to the US, according to officials.
During the battle, people could be seen running for cover as machine-gun fire rattled around them and drivers reversed their cars. frantically trying to escape the clashes.
"Nothing is working," said Ricardo Gonzalez, a worker in the state's congress who shut himself up in his house after picking up his 15-year-old son from school.
"There is a psychosis. No one knows what is going on but everyone is afraid and they have told us to not come in to work tomorrow."
Sinaloa public safety director Cristobal Castaneda said that there were people wounded and did not rule out that there were deaths.
Mr Castaneda said gunmen blocked streets with burning vehicles, a common tactic to make it difficult for security forces to manoeuvre.
Simultaneously, some 20 to 30 prisoners escaped though some were quickly recaptured, he said.
State officials asked residents to avoid going out in parts of city.
Sinaloa's soccer club Dorados announced that it had cancelled its game on Thursday due to security concerns.
Mr Durazo said a patrol of National Guard militarised police came under heavy fire from within the house where Mr Guzmán was being held, forcing them to retreat for their own safety.
Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would hold a meeting of his security cabinet to discuss the incident.
Mr Obrador was elected on a platform of cracking down on Mexico's drug cartels, and has tasked a new security force, the National Guard, with fighting them.
