Fierce battle erupts as forces detain "El Chapo's" son 

Heavy fighting broke out in northern Mexico on Thursday after security forces detained a son of the jailed drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

Fighting raged for several hours after Ovidio Guzmán López was found during a routine patrol in the city of Culiacán.

Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said they responded by taking the house and detaining four people inside, including Guzman, one of several sons of "El Chapo" who have partly taken over the Sinaloa cartel since he was extradited to the United States in 2017.

Cartel gunmen then "surrounded the house, outnumbering the soldiers," and began a massive assault on various parts of the city, Durazo said.

Footage showed heavily-armed men firing on police, with cars, bodies and burning barricades strewn in the road.

Police withdrew without Guzmán in their custody to avoid further violence, officials said.

Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would hold a meeting of his security cabinet to discuss the incident.

López 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 the dealers.

Under El Chapo's leadership, the Sinaloa cartel was the biggest supplier of drugs to the US, officials say. With the kingpin now behind bars, the cartel is said to be partially controlled by Ovidio Guzmán Lopez, who is accused of drug trafficking in the US and believed to be in his twenties.