MEXICO CITY, May 11 (Reuters) - Mexican police on Sunday captured the cousin of the country's most wanted drug lord, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, after a shoot-out in the northwestern city of Culiacan, the blood-stained base of his Sinaloa cartel.

Police said they overpowered six suspected drug traffickers at a house in the Sinaloa state capital who had a huge arsenal of guns, including a grenade launcher and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Federal police said in a statement one of those captured was Alfonso Gutierrez Loera, who said he was a cousin of Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel who escaped from a high-security prison in a laundry van in 2001.

Gutierrez Loera and another man were injured in the exchange of fire, the second bloody confrontation in the past week in Culiacan.

Hitmen from a rival cartel killed a son of Guzman on Thursday night. About 40 people opened fire on Edgar Guzman as he stepped out of his armored pickup truck outside a shopping center.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed 25,000 troops and federal police to fight the well-armed cartels that smuggle cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines to the United States.

Some 1,100 people have died this year as the drug gangs battle each other and security forces.

Calderon, a conservative, said on Friday that Mexicans had to take back their streets from drug peddlers and gunmen. But the past week has been a blow to Calderon's fight, with six senior policeman killed throughout the country in an escalating murder campaign against police forces.

(Reporting by Chris Aspin; Editing by Bill Trott)

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