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