Ecuador

[RTH10260]

Armed gang storms Ecuador TV station as state of ‘internal armed conflict’ declared
Gangsters unleashed wave of terror following move by President Daniel Noboa in response to gang leader’s prison escape

Dan Collyns and Tom Phillips
Tue 9 Jan 2024 23.28 CET

Heavily armed gangsters have stormed the studio of a major television station in Ecuador during a live broadcast, prompting the country’s president to declare a state of “internal armed conflict” amid a series of seemingly coordinated attacks across the South American country.

Police special forces later arrested all the masked gunmen who invaded the headquarters of the TC Televisión network in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, at about 2pm local time on Tuesday.

Toting pistols, shotguns, machine guns, grenades and sticks of dynamite, a number of men overran the studio during the El Noticiero news programme. With the cameras broadcasting live, the men could be seen on camera while some employees lay down on the floor and someone was heard yelling “Don’t shoot!” before the signal was eventually cut.

The newspaper El Universo said panicked reporters and camera operators flooded messaging groups with pleas for help as the outlaws rampaged through the building. “They want to kill the lot of us. Help us,” one message read.

Alina Manrique, the head of news for TC Television, said she was in the control room, across from the studio, when the group of masked men entered the building. One of the men pointed a gun at her head and told her to get on the floor, she told the Associated Press.

“I am still in shock,” Manrique said in a phone interview. “Everything has collapsed … All I know is that it’s time to leave this country, and go very far away.”

Police commander César Zapata later told the TV channel Teleamazonas that officers seized the guns and explosives the gunmen had with them and that 13 people were arrested, saying “This is an act that should be considered as a terrorist act.”

The shocking scenes on live television came as criminal groups launched a wave of terror across Ecuador, amid fresh outbreaks of violence in the country’s prisons.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... -emergency

[RTH10260]

Ecuador prosecutor investigating gang attack on TV station shot and killed
César Suárez killed in brazen daylight attack in Guayaquil as country shaken by dramatic recent surge in violence

Staff and agencies in Quito
Thu 18 Jan 2024 05.04 CET

The public prosecutor who was leading the investigation into the on-air assault on an Ecuadorian television station has been shot and killed in a brazen daylight attack in the crime-ridden city of Guayaquil.

César Suárez, who focused on cases involving organized trans-national crime in Guayas province – one of the country’s most violent areas – was ambushed in the north of the city on Wednesday afternoon.

“The criminals, the terrorists, will not hold back our commitment to Ecuadorian society,” the country’s attorney general, Diana Salazar, said in a video posted to social media. “We call on the forces of order to guarantee the security of those who are carrying out their duties.”

Her office was conducting a preliminary investigation at the site of the killing, Salazar said, expressing her grief for Suárez’s family but giving no further details about the crime.

The Council of the Judiciary condemned the attack in a statement and said that Suarez was traveling to a court hearing when he was killed.

Police said in a statement that the killing had the hallmarks of an assassination, adding that the victim sustained a number of gunshot wounds, according to Reuters.

Ecuador has been shaken by a dramatic surge in violence, including the dramatic attack on the studio of TC Television in Guayaquil, the hostage-taking of more than 200 prison staff, explosions in several cities and the kidnapping of police officers.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... hot-killed