Mexico City: Fourteen Mexican marines died on Friday when their helicopter crashed while transporting an arrested drug lord, the Mexican Navy said. One person survived the crash, who is receiving medical treatment, the Navy said in a statement.

According to the navy statement, their Black Hawk helicopter was escorting another aircraft carrying Rafael Caro Quintero and indicated the chopper had an “accident” near the coastal city of Los Mochis during the operation. The cause of the chopper crash has yet to be determined.

The drug lord and founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was arrested earlier in the day in the northern state of Sinaloa and the Navy chopper was being flown as an escort to the other aircraft.

Meanwhile, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he regretted the loss and expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased on social media.

14 people died in the crash of a military helicopter in Mexico

🔔 The Mexican Navy announced that 14 people were killed and another person was injured when a military helicopter "Black Hawk" crashed in the north of the country, in the state of Sinaloa. pic.twitter.com/X5n4Z8aGpv
— Spriteer (@spriteer_774400) July 16, 2022

While condoling the death of marines in crash, the Navy wrote, “[it] laments the deaths of those who lost their lives in this accident,” it said, adding, “as of now, there is no information linking the plane crash to the arrest of the alleged drug trafficker.”
The Navy statement further said that the fugitive drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero was found by a sniffer dog named “Max” who was hiding in bushes in the town of Choix, Sinaloa.

The drug lord is most wanted criminal in the US as he is accused of murdering Enrique Camarena Salazar, an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in 1985. The

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The United States is after Caro Quintero and seeks to extradite him for the murder of Enrique Camarena Salazar, an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in 1985. The brutal murder of Camarena marked a low point in US-Mexico relations.