Tension is growing in Ecuador this Tuesday after several hooded and armed gang members took over TC public television in Guayaquil “so that they know that they should not play with the mafias,” one of the assailants said on camera. Late this Tuesday, the Ecuadorian police announced the arrest of the people involved in the assault on the facilities and the evacuation of personnel.
The images from the El Noticiero program, live, showed the assailants forcing the staff to lie down on the ground - who they took as hostages - and demanding that they ask the Police to leave live. While shots and screams from the workers were heard.
"There is a colleague injured," as heard on the webcast before the signal was cut off. In this sense, the directors of the public media asked the government for protection against the violent events that the country is facing, as reported by Infobae. Subsequently, protection organizations such as the Periodistas Sin Cadenas Foundation issued urgent alerts.
The National University in Guayaquil was also attacked by gang members and there were kidnappings and extortions.
Other attacks had occurred before. In the city of Esmeraldas, an explosive device was thrown near security forces facilities. Likewise, three police officers who were on duty were kidnapped in the city of Machala, in the south of the country. And in Quito another police officer was kidnapped by three gang members.
To address these serious incidents late this Tuesday, President Daniel Noboa declared in a decree the existence of an "internal armed conflict" in the country and ordered the Armed Forces to carry out military actions to fight against crime groups. organized. During Tuesday's day there were kidnappings of at least seven police officers and a series of explosions in several cities, as well as riots that occurred yesterday in six prisons in the country and which ended with the declaration of a state of emergency by Noboa.
The move was a response to the apparent escape of Adolfo Macías, leader of the Los Choneros criminal gang, from the prison where he was serving a 34-year sentence, and other recent prison incidents, including the hostage-taking of guards.
Noboa, the son of one of the country's richest men, took office in November promising to stop a wave of drug-related violence on the streets and in prisons that has been growing for years.
