Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, leader of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, may have been killed in a shootout.

According to US and regional anti-drug officials consulted by El Universal, Joaquin Guzman, alias “El Chapo,” crime boss of the Sinaloa Drug cartel has been using Guatemala and Honduras as a “hideout and base of operations.” Joaquin Guzman-Loera “El Chapo” remains a fugitive from justice in the both the United States and the Republic of Mexico and there is currently a U.S. State Department reward of up to $5 million dollars for information leading to his arrest. Unconfirmed reports that Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was killed earlier this week in a rural area in northern Guatemala are being disputed by officials in the Central American country. Guzman, 55, heads the infamous Sinaloa cartel – Mexico’s most powerful international drug-trafficking network – and rumors had him being killed in a shootout near San Valentin, a small town near the Mexican border. The rumor is false, Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla told local reporters, adding it stemmed from misleading accounts from San Valentin residents. Authorities scanning the area haven't found Guzman's body or any signs that a large-scale confrontation occurred, The Associated Press reported. "I apologize if there was a misunderstanding," Lopez told the Guatemalan radio station Emisores Unidos. "It was a mix-up. We were referring to information generated from the area that there was possibly a crime scene with a dead person resembling El Chapo." Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/el-chapo-killed-guatemala-untrue/2013/02/22/id/491631#ixzz2LflTyXwS