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10-01-2024
QUITO: Masked gunmen have broken into a live television studio in Ecuador and threatened terrified staff.
Employees were forced on to the floor during the broadcast by the public television channel TC in the city of Guayaquil before the live feed cut out.
The attackers were later seen leaving the studio, reportedly with several hostages. Police have made arrests.
A 60-day state of emergency began in Ecuador on Monday after a notorious gangster vanished from his prison cell.
It is unclear whether the incident at the TV studio in Guayaquil was related to the disappearance from a prison in the same city of the boss of the Choneros gang, Adolfo Macias Villamar, or Fito as he is better known.
Ecuador is one of the world’s top banana exporters, but also exports oil, coffee, cocoa, shrimps and fish products. A surge in violence in the Andean nation, inside and outside its prisons, has been linked to fighting between drug cartels, both foreign and local, over control of cocaine routes to the US and Europe.
During Tuesday’s assault at the TV station, one gunman pointed a pump-action shotgun at the head of one of the captives, who was also threatened with a revolver.
A woman could be heard pleading, “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot,” media reports, while a person could be heard screaming in apparent pain.
“Please, they came in to kill us,” a TC employee told media in a WhatsApp message. “God don’t let this happen. The criminals are on air.”
President Daniel Noboa said on Tuesday that an “internal armed conflict” now existed in the country and he was mobilizing the armed forces to carry out “military operations to neutralize” what he called “transnational organized crime, terrorist organizations and belligerent non-state actors”.
He was responding to a wave of recent jail riots and escapes from prisons and other acts of violence blamed by authorities on criminal gangs.
His decree listed the Choneros (named after the town of Chone in Manabi Province) as well as 21 other gangs: the Aguilas, AguilasKiller, AK-47, Caballeros Oscuros, ChoneKiller, Covicheros, Cuartel de las Feas, Cubanos, Fatales, Ganster, Kater Piler, Lagartos, Latin Kings, Lobos, Los p.27, Los Tiburones, Mafia 18, Mafia Trebol, Patrones, R7 and Tiguerones.
The order built on the state of emergency declared on Monday, which ordains a nightly curfew in an attempt to curb violence following Fito’s escape. Security forces have been trying to re-establish order in at least six jails where riots broke out on Monday.
In the early hours of Tuesday, nearly 40 inmates, including another convicted drug lord, broke out of a prison in the city of Riobamba. (Int’l News Desk)
