Families protest over prison guards detained for El Chapo's escape

Nearly one week on since drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's brazen escape from prison, security is high above ground the tunnel route that the fugitive used to regain his freedom in an escape that officials have called an inside job.

Mexican authorities must have colluded with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán to enable the country's top drug lord to escape from a maximum security prison at the weekend, Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong told media earlier this week.

The government has reported that some 30 prison officials have been interrogated over Guzmán's escape.

But some family members of prison guards who have been detained for questioning say they have not seen their loved ones for days. Protesting outside the prison in State of Mexico, they told Reuters the guards are innocent.

"We call on authorities investigating the case and our government to act with full justice and in accordance to human rights because we believe in the innocence of our family members, who have dedicated part of their lives to this prison and we believe in their innocence," said this unidentified protester.

The heat is on in President Enrique Peña Nieto as authorities pursue investigations to re-capture drug kingpin Guzmán, with authorities putting up a 70 million peso reward (US$3.8 million dollars) for information leading to the capture of Guzmán.

"We're not going to resolve this issue with anger and wrath. We need to take on the responsibility that this implies, the government of republic has not evaded its responsibility. They took on the task of an extensive surveillance of this criminal and the only way to re-right this wrong is to recapture this criminal and punish all those involved," said President Peña Nieto.

The government have said they had no information on the suspected whereabouts of Guzmán, who headed the powerful Sinaloa cartel before his capture in February 2014 in the northwestern city of Mazatlán.