File photo taken on Feb. 22, 2014 shows Mexico's Navy (SEMAR) members, guarding the drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias "El Chapo" Guzman (C), during a press presentation at the hangar of the Mexico's Navy SEMAR, in Mexico city, capital of Mexico. After an early morning raid in northwestern Mexico's Sinaloa State's town of Los Mochis by Mexican police and marines on Friday, Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera was recaptured, six months after his second prison break. In 2001, Guzman was wheeled out by a janitor in a laundry cart. In 2015, Guzman escaped from prison after his allies dug a tunnel about a mile long right into his jail cell at the Altiplano prison in central Mexico.[Photo/Xinhua]

For years the world's most wanted drug lord used tunnels to move tons of drugs into the United States and to evade capture.

Six months after a brazen jailbreak worthy of Hollywood, escaping a maximum security prison through the tunnel from his cell, Mexico's security forces turned the tables on Guzman on Friday.

"During the confrontation, Guzman Loera managed to escape through the city's drainage system, which had already been factored into the capture strategy," Gomez said late on Friday, as Guzman was whisked by helicopter to the same maximum security prison in central Mexico he broke out of in July.

Guzman's arrest is a major boost for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who was highly embarrassed by last year's jailbreak, Guzman's second in 15 years.

Gomez said Guzman was almost caught in October, when Marines in a helicopter zeroed in on him near a ranch in the rugged northern state of Durango.

But he was spied in the company of two women and a young girl, prompting the Marines to hold fire and allowing him to slip their grasp.

The encounter pushed Guzman deeper into Mexico's notorious "Golden Triangle", where the bulk of the country's opium and marijuana are produced, limiting his communications and cutting down his security detail to a small core.

But for reasons that are unclear, El Chapo had by December decided to hide out in cities. The tunnel-builder began working on homes across Sinaloa and Sonora.

Marines formed a cordon around the block on Saturday morning, and said they believed Guzman had been in the property for around 48 hours before the raid was launched.

One local resident, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said the operation appears to have been triggered after a neighbor complained there were armed men outside his house.

Marine helicopters then hovered over nearby storm drains as they sought to capture Guzman. A dead rat lay beside the mouth of one nearby drain that residents suspect he used in his escape.

After chasing him through a drain and stopping his getaway car, the Marines took Guzman and made an unscheduled stop - waiting for reinforcements at Hotel Doux, a love motel on the outskirts of town that rents out rooms for a few hours at a time.