Rumors of the death of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman circulated on Thursday night, following reports that Mexico’s most wanted drug lord may have been killed in a firefight in Guatemala.
“We can’t be sure, it could be (El Chapo),” Guatemala’s Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said, shortly before the Reporter went to press.
Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas told Guatemalan television that at least two men died in a shootout between rival gangs near San Francisco in the Peten region of northern Guatemala. One of the victims is said to resemble Guzman and Guatemalan and Mexican authorities were reportedly attempting to identify him using fingerprints and photographic evidence.
However, Cuevas later told Mexican media outlet Milenio that there had been some confusion and he could no longer confirm that there had been a shootout or that authorities were in possession of any bodies.
“I don’t have any information that can confirm that,” Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto told reporters in Mexico when pressed on the issue.
Earlier this week, Mexican daily Excelsior reported that WikiLeaks had published emails from U.S. private intelligence firm Stratfor speculating that Guzman was located in El Peten.
“We believe that El Chapo is currently hiding in El Peten, Guatemala, near the border with Mexico” wrote a Stratfor analyst in an email dating back to 2011.
A fugitive billionaire, Guzman is the head of Mexico’s most powerful cartel, the Sinaloa Federation. This is not the first time his death has been rumored.
The latest rumors come less than two weeks after Guzman’s chief of security Francisco Javier Rodriguez Picante, also known as “El Fantasma,” was arrested in Sinaloa.
Guzman was previously arrested in Guatemala in 1993, spending eight years in jail before escaping — legend has it he was wheeled out in a laundry cart — from the maximum security Puente Grande prison outside Guadalajara in 2001.