Government report on failed operation shows soldiers pushing Ovidio Guzmán López to tell brothers to call off rescue attempt

Mexican soldiers who detained a son of the jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán forced him to telephone his brothers in a desperate effort to call off a rescue attempt by cartel gunmen.

Instead, the call triggered a fresh onslaught in the northern city of Culiacán as the Sinaloa cartel mounted a terrifying show of strength that eventually prompted the outnumbered soldiers to free the capo’s son in exchange for their lives.

Suspects had been arrested after drugs, money and rocket launchers seized in Mexico City

Twenty-seven of 31 suspected drugs cartel members arrested this week in a Mexico City raid have been freed by a judge, marking the government’s second high-profile blow on policing the drugs war in as many weeks.

The suspects were nabbed by security forces in a central district of the capital on Tuesday after authorities seized two laboratories used to produce synthetic drugs, 50 kg (110 pounds) of chemical precursors, more than two tonnes of marijuana and 20 kg of cocaine, as well as an unspecified amount of money, rocket launchers and grenades.

In Culiacán, masked men exchange gunfire with security forces and erect burning barricades as armed trucks patrol

Intense fighting has erupted in the Mexican city of Culiacán, where masked gunmen threw up burning barricades and traded gunfire with security forces amid rumours that one of the sons of the jailed former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán had been arrested.

Images shared on social media showed trucks with mounted heavy machine guns patrolling the city streets; another clip showed a gunman with an assault rifle shooting at an unknown target against a soundtrack of continuous gunfire.

Guzman’s dramatic trial showed how the cartels that traffick most of the world’s drugs today do not honour the mafia code of omertà

When Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is sentenced on 25 June, he will most likely be sent to US maximum-security prison from which there will be no more tunnels and no more escapes.

Guzmán was convicted on all 10 charges after years of painstaking behind-the-scenes work by US Department of Justice prosecutors who cut deals with captive drug traffickers to get their man.