Hell broke loose in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Thursday where cartel gunmen went on a rampage in retaliation for the reported arrest of a son of imprisoned kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Gúzman.

The footage shared on social media showed vehicles on fire, carjackings, car bombings, snipers in the streets and explosions in the city of about 800,000 people. The cartel gunmen even had the audacity and the ability to set jail inmates free, according to various news reports.

The chaos erupted as Mexican security forces arrested Ovidio Guzmán, son of the drug lord known as El Chapo, who’s serving a life sentence in the United States. But things got confusing after the initial reports of the arrest. Reuters reported that Security Minister Alfonso Durazo told them that "security forces retreated without Ovidio Guzman to protect lives."

Under any other circumstances, Ovidio’s capture or attempted capture should be celebrated, but Culiacán's descent into a war zone shows the government’s inability to rein in the cartel that many thought had been weakened with the arrest of El Chapo.

There were no early reports of the death toll. But chaos apparently reigns in the city that's almost smack in the center of the state of Sinaloa, about 900 miles south of the U.S.-México border.

The violence further stains a nation convulsing from drug violence.

No word yet from president Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. But the president also has a lot of explaining to do, especially if it turns out that security forces couldn't keep the cartels from taking Guzman's son with them.

More than 23,000 people have been murdered under his watch, beating last year’s record of 22,316, according to media reports.

Who knows how many people were killed in Culiacán Thursday, but the cartels demonstrate the government of Lopez Obrador has not gotten the best of them. Not at all.

Let’s hope Obrador gets the city under control – for everyone’s sakes. Americans have long turned a blind eye to this type of violence south of the border, and that’s a mistake.

Elvia Díaz is an editorial columnist for The Republic and azcentral. Reach her at 602-444-8606 or elvia.diaz@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter, @elviadiaz1.