Dozens of agents were taken hostage after a series of detonations in Quito and other cities. The attacks are said to be a reaction to prisoner transfers and prison search operations. Dozens of security officers were taken hostage in clashes in Ecuadorian prisons on Thursday (08/31) after at least four car bombs exploded in Quito and other cities, near the buildings of the agency responsible for the prisons. Authorities attribute these attacks to retaliation for prisoner transfers and police raids on prisons.
“We are concerned about the safety of our employees,” Ecuadorian Interior Minister Juan Zapata said at a news conference.
These types of attacks are a new example of the power of organized crime in a country that until recently was an oasis of peace between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine producers.
The incidents occurred just days after the end of a bloody first round of presidential elections, with the assassination of one of the favorites in the elections, the candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
In a few hours, between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, four car bombs exploded, two of which in Quito, the country’s capital, and two more in Machala and Pasaje, two cities in the southern province of El Oro, on the border with Peru. The explosions left no victims.
Riots
The largest riot took place in Cuenca prison, where inmates arrested 57 officers, including 50 prison guards and seven police officers. A total of 600 police and soldiers have remained outside the prison since Wednesday without entering the facility.
A video allegedly recorded inside the Cuenca prison has gone viral on social networks, apparently by the police and detained prison guards, in which they appeal to the government to find a solution that allows their release.
According to local reports, another 15 guards are being held in Machala Jail, which has not yet been officially confirmed.
There was also an attempted riot in the Virgilio Guerrero juvenile prison in Quito, where some teenagers started a fire on the second and third floors of the center, forcing the firefighters to make a huge intervention to control the flames without apparently casualties.
Possible reaction to the prison search operation
For the police and the government, both the car bombings and the riots are a response by organized crime to the disarmament efforts of criminal groups that control prisons and retaliation for the transfer of inmates between prisons. In the midst of bloody gang warfare, the country’s prisons have become centers of operations for criminal gangs and the scene of various massacres.
The explosions and clashes occurred a few hours after a massive intervention by 2,200 police and soldiers in the Latacunga prison, located in the province of Cotopaxi, about 70 kilometers south of Quito, and presumably controlled by the criminal gang calling itself Los Lobos .
This would explain the fact that, according to the authorities, the car bombs in Quito were aimed at buildings linked to the National Service of Integral Attention to Persons Deprived of Their Liberty (Snai), the state body responsible for the control and administration of the 35 prisons in the Ecuador…
The operation in the Latacunga prison seized 49 sidearms and two bulletproof vests, among other prohibited objects, similar to other operations previously carried out in other prisons with the aim of stopping the series of prison massacres which, due to the clashes between these gangs have left more than 400 prisoners killed since 2020.
An arsenal of military weapons, including rifles, grenade launchers and grenades, was found in the Guayaquil prison complex, which houses some 12,300 inmates, weeks ago.
For the first time, the police and military entered one of the prisons allegedly controlled by Los Lobos to seize weapons, which resulted in riots in other prisons controlled by the same criminal group, such as those in the cities of Cuenca, Azogues and Machala.
transfer of prisoners
Authorities also transferred the six detainees for the August 9 murder of Fernando Villavicencio on Wednesday to avoid gang clashes, Security Minister Wagner Bravo said.
Ecuadorian authorities said they had arrested at least 10 suspects involved in the reported explosions in Quito. This was the first time an alleged simultaneous bombing had taken place in the nation’s capital. A similar incident occurred last year in Guayaquil, one of the epicenters of Ecuador’s crisis of violence, home to the country’s largest port and the main exit point for cocaine trafficking by organized crime.
The current attacks come as Ecuador is plunged into a rising tide of violence that has seen the country drop from 5.8 to 25.32 intentional homicides per 100,000 population in five years in 2022, the highest number in its history. history, with a series of murders and massacres related to organized crime and drug trafficking.
md/cn (EFE, AFP)
Source: Terra
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