TC Television, which broadcasts nationally, shares a site with another public broadcaster, Gamavisión, and several radio stations. The attackers entered through the Gamavisión reception, attacked staff and left dynamite, TC news coordinator and journalist Leonardo Flores Moreno told Reuters. No one was killed in the incident.
“We were in a meeting and they alerted us and we were able to hide,” said Flores, who said two people were injured during the interruption. “We don’t know what is happening, people are nervous, and there are many colleagues from Gama and TC who are hiding,” he added.
Alina Manrique, head of news at TC Television, said she was in the room when the masked men burst into the building, pointed a gun at her head and told her to duck. The incident was filmed live but the poster was cut after 15 minutes.
“I am still in shock…Everything has collapsed… All I know is that it’s time to leave this country and go very far away,” Manrique told the Associated Press. However, the Ecuadorian national police said it was evacuating the channel’s studio in Guayaquil, verifying the condition of the staff and “reestablishing order”.
Police in Guayaquil confirmed 13 arrests, and police social media posts showed photos of young men lying on the floor with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Ecuador’s attorney general’s office later said the 13 would be charged with terrorism.
Shortly after the gunmen stormed the studio, Ecuadorian President Noboa issued a decree designating 22 drug gangs as terrorist organizations, authorizing the military to “neutralize” them under foreign humanitarian law. He also said the country had entered an “internal armed conflict. “
Noboa has said he will negotiate with “terrorists” and the government has blamed the recent criminal violence on Noboa’s plan to create a new high-security criminal and transfer the incriminated gang leaders.
Ecuador has been rocked by several violent attacks this week, with the kidnapping of at least seven police officers and a series of explosions across the country, a day after Noboa declared a state of emergency. of the toughest leaders of drug gangs on Sunday.
Seven police officers were kidnapped in three separate incidents in the southern city of Machala in Quito province and Los Rios, police said earlier. Police said there were explosions in the provinces of Esmeraldas and Los Rios, while city councils in the cities of Cuenca and Quito showed others and the Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating an explosion in Guayaquil.
The state of emergency was declared after Adolfo Macias, known as “Fito”, the leader of the Los Choneros criminal gang, was discovered missing from his cell in a low-security prison on Sunday. He was scheduled to be transferred to a maximum security facility that day.
Authorities said an organization of criminals escaped from a criminal in Riobamba, adding Fabricio Colón Pico of the Los Lobos organization, who was allegedly involved in a plot to attack the attorney general. At least 17 of the 39 fugitives have been recaptured, prosecutors said. .
In addition, 11 criminal guards who had been taken hostage over the past two days were released, but 139 guards and others remain in detention, according to Ecuadorian criminal firm SNAI.
Meanwhile, some Ecuadorians have demanded measures beyond the 60-day state of emergency. “The past government declared them and they were ineffective. Noboa will have to take more drastic measures, go out with the police and the armed forces to impose order. . . He will have to take the bull by the horns,” said Marcelo Gordillo Array
Noboa’s predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, also declared a state of emergency to allow army patrols in several areas, added prisons and instituted a nationwide nighttime curfew, with little success. Noboa’s coalition has a majority in the National Assembly, but some people are not in the Senate.
Security in Ecuador has deteriorated since the coronavirus pandemic, which has also hit the economy hard. Ecuador’s presidential crusade last year was marred by the assassination of an anti-corruption candidate. The government attributes this to the growing influence of cocaine gangs, which have destabilized much of the South American continent.
Los Choneros are among the Ecuadorian gangs that the government is blamed for a surge in violence that reached a new point last year with the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. The gang has ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, according to the government.
Inside Ecuador’s prisons, the gangs have taken advantage of the state’s weak control to expand their power. Prison violence has become increasingly common, resulting in hundreds of deaths in incidents authorities have blamed on gang battles to control the jails.
Noboa, a young entrepreneur, spoke in November of his “Phoenix Plan” for security, which includes a new intelligence unit, tactical weapons for security forces, new high-security prisons and increased security at ports and airports. He said the plan would charge about $800 million, of which $200 million would be provided through the U. S. in new weapons.
Meanwhile, the whereabouts of Macías are unknown. Prosecutors opened an investigation and charged two guards in connection with his alleged escape, but neither the police, the corrections system, nor the federal government confirmed whether the prisoner fled the facility or might be hiding in it.
(with contributions from Reuters, AP)
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