The gunmen usually dressed in black and wore balaclavas when they approached the staff before finishing the meal. The attackers entered through the reception of Gamavisión, with whom TC supplies the site, assaulted the staff and left dynamite, explained TC’s news coordinator and journalist Leonardo. Flores Moreno told Reuters that no one was killed in the incident.
Prosecutor Cesar Suarez, who had conducted other high-profile investigations in the past, was shot and killed while driving a vehicle, Attorney General Diana Salazar said. “Organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not impede our engagement with society,” he said in a video broadcast on X.
At least 13 other people were arrested following the live-streamed attack on TC Television, prompting President Daniel Noboa to claim that Ecuador is in an “internal armed conflict” amid a wave of killings and other drug-related crimes.
Footage of gunmen taking over a television studio of public channel TC on Tuesday afternoon was broadcast live for about 20 minutes and made headlines around the world. Alina Manrique, a 39-year-old journalist who was among the hostages, said she was afraid of being killed and imagined never seeing her children again. Being rescued by police after the gunmen surrendered was like “being reborn,” she said.
Ecuador has been rocked by several violent attacks, 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. The move was taken in reaction to the criminal escape of one of the leaders of the toughest drug gangs on Sunday.
The state of emergency was declared after Adolfo Macías, known as “Fito”, leader of the Los Choneros criminal gang, was discovered missing on Sunday in his cell phone in a low security criminal. He was scheduled to be transferred to a maximum security facility that Authorities said a criminal organization 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, the prosecutor reported. said the workplace.
Shortly after the television incident, army and police operations were deployed across Ecuador as the country grappled with a wave of violence and the arrest of around 180 criminal staff among inmates. Noboa declared a state of emergency for 60 days, sending the military into the streets and designating 22 gangs as terrorist groups, and said Wednesday that U. S. aid was expected within days.
Noboa has said he will not 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 incriminated gang leaders. However, 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
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.
(with AP inputs)
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