Mexico's most wanted drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is presumed dead as authorities in Guatemala secure a remote rural area where local residents reported of a shootout between drug gangs.

Officials earlier said they were investigating however as of late Thursday, as they clarify that they have yet found any bodies or even confirmed a shootout happened.

"We are ending the night patrol because we have not found any evidence that tells us that there was a confrontation," interior minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said.

He referred to the possible death of Guzman a "chaotic rumor generated by all sides," he said security forces would begin searching on foot and in the air of the area, located near Mexico's border at first light Friday.

Guatemalan government spokesman Francisco Cuevas first told Guatevision Television that two drug gangs had clashed in Peten, an area that has seen an increase in drug violence and that at least two men had died in the shootout.

"We are waiting for more precise information in the next hours to confirm or deny if one of the most wanted drug traffickers is among the dead in this clash," Cuevas said.

Later, Cuevas told Mexico's Televisa network that authorities are now reporting that they had not found anything where the supposed shootout took place.

Confusing the situation further was when the Interior Department spokeswoman Carla Herrera said that a victim resembled that of Guzman. She said officials requested the Mexican government to send Guzman's fingerprints to compare them to the man found inside a vehicle.

However, Herrera's boss, Lopez Bonilla told the Associated Press that it was residents of the town of San Francisco who had told officials of a gun battle and reported that one of the people killed looked like Guzman.

"The fact is we don't have any of this information confirmed," Lopez Bonilla said.

Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto said he had no information on the case.

"I don't have any information that can confirm that," he told reporters.

Guzman the leader of Sinaloa drug cartel has been in hiding since his escape from a Mexican maximum security prison in 2001. He was captured in Guatemala in 1993.

Last week, Chicago named him the city's Public Enemy No. 1, the first criminal to receive the moniker since American gangster Al Capone.