UPDATE 1-Mexico 'did well' in releasing Guzman son to avoid violence, president says

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador defended the country's security forces on Friday, saying they had saved lives by releasing a son of jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman after his brief capture in the northwestern city of Culiacan.

Cartel gunmen on Thursday surrounded security forces in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, and made them free the drug lord's son Ovidio Guzman, after his detention triggered gunbattles and a prison break that shocked civilians in the city. Lopez Obrador was asked at his regular morning news conference who had taken the decision to release Guzman's son, and he said that his top security officials had made the call, adding that he supported it because it saved lives.

"The officials who took this decision did well," he said. The violent reaction to Guzman's capture was on a scale rarely seen during Mexico's long drug war, even after his more famous father's arrests.

Chaos in Culiacan continued as night fell. A large group of inmates escaped from the city prison. Residents cowered in shopping centers and supermarkets as gunfire roared. Black plumes of smoke rose across the skyline.

Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist who took office in December, rejected criticism that the government had acted weakly in releasing the younger Guzman, describing this view as "conjecture" put about by his adversaries to descredit him. A trenchant critic of past administrations, Lopez Obrador said the previous strategy had turned Mexico into a "graveyard" and that his critics wanted him to continue with it.

Joaquin Guzman, El Chapo, escaped from prison in Mexico twice, in 2001 and 2015. Under the previous administration, security forces captured him twice in Sinaloa, in 2014 and 2016. The previous government extradited the senior Guzman to the United States on the eve of President Donald Trump's accession.

Guzman was found guilty in a U.S. court in February of smuggling tons of drugs and sentenced to life in prison.