Twenty-four hours of terror as cartel violence engulfs Mexican city

Instead, Arandas found himself scrambling for cover as security forces and cartel gunmen fought for control of an airfield that had become the latest frontline of a Latin American drug conflict that claims tens of thousands of lives every year.

At least 29 people lay dead, including 10 members of the military and 19 alleged cartel shooters, while 35 soldiers were wounded.

Seven soldiers were killed in the ensuing gun battle between troops and gangsters with .50 caliber machine guns desperate to avoid the arrest of Guzmán, an alleged cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine trafficker for whose arrest the US had offered a $5m reward.

A Black Hawk gunship pummeled one target with a 3,000-shots-per-minute, six-barrel machine gun similar to those US troops used in Vietnam.

So it was that on Thursday morning, Sinaloa gunmen decided to raise hell.

But he said the Sinaloa cartel was such a vast, horizontally run organization that his arrest was unlikely to make a major difference to its illegal operations.