Ecuador has erupted into a ‘civil war’ with cartel thugs after the president ordered the army onto the streets and declared a state of ‘internal armed conflict’.
Crazed criminals have rampaged through the South American country’s cities today after President Daniel Noboa, 36, ordered a state of emergency.
Hooded gangsters seized a state TV news studio today, while a university was attacked and jail guards reportedly executed by prisoners.
Ecuador has been rocked by a series of attacks including explosions and the abduction of several police officers after the government imposed a state of emergency in the wake of the escape of a powerful gang leader from prison.
Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macías, 44, the leader of Los Choneros gang, was found missing from his cell in a low security prison on the same day he was supposed to be transferred to a maximum security facility, on Sunday.
A manhunt is underway for Macías and Los Lobos leader Fabricio Colon Pico, who also escaped prison on Tuesday since his arrest last Friday for alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate Ecuador’s attorney general.
Peru also declared an emergency on Tuesday along its northern border with Ecuador because of the ongoing violence.
The US State Department said it was ‘extremely concerned’ by the violence. The British Foreign Office warned against all but essential travel to parts of the country.
Macías, who was convicted of drug trafficking, murder and organized crime, was serving a 34-year sentence in La Regional prison in the port of Guayaquil.
Los Choneros is one of the Ecuadorian gangs authorities consider responsible for a spike in violence that reached a new level last year with the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
The gang has links with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, according to authorities.
Experts and authorities have acknowledged that gang members practically rule from inside the prisons, and Macías was believed to have continued controlling his group from within the detention facility.
Prosecutors opened an investigation and charged two guards in connection with the alleged escape, but neither the police, the corrections system, nor the federal government confirmed whether Macías fled the facility or might be hiding in it.
In February 2013, Macías escaped from a maximum security facility but was recaptured weeks later.
In 2021, Macías’s girlfriend was briefly arrested after she spent a week sleeping in his jail cell – and was busted as she tried to leave the prison in the middle of a riot while wearing a guard’s uniform.
On Tuesday, gunshots rang out on live TV as men armed with bombs and grenades burst into a studio shortly after gangsters vowed a ‘war’ against the president’s plans to reclaim control from ‘narcoterrorists.’
