Mexican druglord Joaquin Guzman Loera - alias ''El Chapo'' - after his February 2014 arrest [Mario Guzman/EPA]
The Mexican druglord who made a brazen prison break through
a hole in his cell and through underground tunnels has been recaptured, the
president announced on twitter.
“Mission accomplished, e have him,”President Enrique Pena
Nieto tweeted on Friday.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the boss of the powerful Sinaloa
cartel, was Mexico’s most-wanted fugitive.
Guzman was apprehended after a shootout with Mexican marines
in Los Mochis, a seaside city in Guzman’s home state of Sinaloa, a federal
official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press news
agency.
He said Guzman was taken alive and was not wounded. Five
people were killed and one Mexican marines injured in the clash at a house.
The Mexican navy said marines seized two armoured vehicles,
eight rifles, a handgun, and a grenade launcher in the raid that recaptured the
fugitive.
“Afew weeks ago there was a close call in his home state of
Sinaloa, this morning not so lucky,” Aljazeera’s Natasha Ghoneim, reporting
from Ahuisculco in Mexico, said.
"The
Mexican government is saying that this morning military responded to a building
in Sinaloa after someone compliant that armed men were holding up inside a
building," she said.
"The capture of Joaquin 'Chapo'
Guzman-Loera is a victory for the rule of law and the Mexican people and
government," the US Drug Enforcement Agency said in a statement.
"It is further evidence of our two countries' resolve to ensure justice is served for families who have been plagued by Guzman-Loera's ruthless acts of violence."
His July prison escape was the second for
Guzman in 15 years - and a major embarrassment for Mexico's president.
The notorious narcotics kingpin was first captured in 1993 in Guatemala, but he escaped from a prison in western Mexico in 2001 by hiding in a laundry cart.
In July 2015, Guzman fled a maximum-security prison near Mexico City just 17 months after authorities captured him following a 13-year manhunt.
He escaped through a 1.5-kilometre tunnel with a redesigned motorcycle on special tracks, emerging in a house outside the prison.
Nieto had refused to hand Guzman over to the United States, but Mexican authorities are now likely to extradite him there.
