Seven people died in shootouts between gunmen and the security forces in the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Durango, officials said.

Army troops and police engaged a group of gunmen in a shootout in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, state prosecutors said.

Four gunmen were killed and seven others wounded in the gunfight, while five soldiers, a police officer and a civilian were also wounded, the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office told Efe.

The shootout started when the gunmen opened fire from a house on police officers on a routine patrol, the AG’s office said.

One of those killed was a man known only as “El Mayito,” a suspected gunman on the payroll of Sinaloa drug cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman, media reports said.

Officials, however, did not confirm the reports.

Guzman’s organization, sometimes referred to by officials as the Pacific cartel, is the oldest drug cartel in Mexico and has its base in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa.

The Sinaloa cartel, according to intelligence agencies, is a transnational business empire that operates in the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Security forces members searched the house after the shootout, arrested an unidentified woman and found a tunnel connecting the dwelling to another building.

Some gunmen may have used the tunnel to escape, officials said.

The wounded were treated by Red Cross paramedics and taken to different hospitals.

Officials in Durango, meanwhile, said army troops engaged gunmen in a shootout that left a soldier and two suspected criminals dead.

An army patrol encountered the gunmen in the city of Otaez, triggering the shootout, the Durango Attorney General’s Office said.

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