With thousands of soldiers deployed across Ecuador, the government continued Thursday its massive offensive against criminal gangs linked to the drug trade that have been terrorizing the country for four days and are still holding 180 prison guards hostage.
• Also read: Violence in Ecuador: the origins of an unprecedented security crisis
• Also read: Ecuador: The country is “in a state of war,” says President Noboa
• Also read: “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!”: A hostage situation live on television in Ecuador
The Prison Administration (SNAI) reported Thursday that 39 new agents were held hostage in seven prisons across the country, bringing the total to 178 guards and administrative staff. She also said that prisoners from prisons were firing on the armed forces.
More than 22,400 soldiers in action, land, air and sea patrols, searches and large-scale operations in prisons: the government of the new President Daniel Noboa seems unwilling to give in to the intimidation attempts of criminal gangs.
AFP
“They wanted to sow fear, but they provoked our anger. They thought they were subjugating an entire country and forgot that the armed forces are trained for war,” Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo warned on social media.
Although activity is slowly resuming in the country's capitals, many shops remain closed, public transport is slow, universities and schools are offering virtual courses and telecommuting is virtually the norm.
“Thank you very much, police!”
The drug offensive showed its worst face on Tuesday when masked men armed with guns and grenades broke into the set of a public television station in Guayaquil, a major port in the country's southwest, taking journalists hostage and wounding two employees.
Thanks to the quick intervention of the police, the hostage-taking was ended without any fatalities. Thirteen attackers were arrested. The images of the spectacular attack that went around the world caused panic in the city.
The broadcast of the public television channel TC resumed on Thursday afternoon. “Thank you everyone for your messages of support! (…) Many thanks to the police and the army for their professionalism and their impeccable work,” commented a moderator, visibly very moved and with sobs in her voice.
The Sunday escape from Guayaquil prison of the feared Choneros gang leader Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito,” followed by prison mutinies, hostage-taking and bombings, triggered the violent reaction of the 36-year-old President Noboa, who took office in the fall with the promise of the The choice was to restore security in the country, which was once an oasis of peace but has developed into a transshipment point for Kobain from neighboring Colombia and Peru.
“We are in a state of war and we cannot give in to these terrorist groups,” the youngest president in the country’s history assured on Wednesday, after declaring Ecuador an “internal armed conflict” the day before. He estimated that these twenty “terrorist groups” had “more than 20,000 members.”
On Monday, he declared a 60-day state of emergency throughout the territory, including in prisons that had become operation centers for drug crimes.
On Wednesday evening, the death toll from violence rose to 16 dead after an arson attack on a nightclub in the Amazon region that left two people dead and nine injured. Police described the attack as “terrorist.”
On Tuesday, another crime boss, Fabricio Colon Pico, one of the leaders of the powerful Los Lobos gang, also escaped from prison.
“tattoo hunt”
Videos circulating daily on social networks show gruesome killings of members of the security forces, looting and alleged attacks. The police denied the veracity of these images, which led to psychosis among the population.
In Guayaquil, the most dangerous city in the country and still a ghost town on Wednesday, some more pedestrians and traffic could be seen on the streets this Thursday, while the administrations, now fenced off on all sides, reopened their doors, the AFP noted.
According to the information website Primicias, which speaks of a “tattoo hunt”, the police deployed in the port city are systematically checking the tattoos of those detained in order to determine whether they belong to a gang.
AFP
Some companies are planning to partially reopen their activities and residents are starting to walk to work again, just like in the capital Quito.
“We are afraid, afraid that they will do the same thing again when we least expect it,” Ines Macas, a 69-year-old housewife, told AFP, recounting looting in Quito.
Located between Colombia and Peru, the world's largest cocaine producers, Ecuador has become a new bastion of the drug trade. Gangs fight for control of territory but are united in their war against it. “Country.”
Over the past five years, the rate of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the country has increased from 6 to 46 in 2023.