At least 57 prison guards and police officers were taken hostage by inmates at six prisons after grenade attacks and two car bombings in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, on Thursday night, officials said.
The prison uprising was believed to be a response to a police sweep of prisons a day earlier to confiscate firearms. The wave of attacks was an apparent show of force by organized crime syndicates, but no casualties were reported.
SNAI Prison Authority vehicle bombed; One went outside its headquarters and the other outside the structure where the SNAI offices once stood.
Hours later, according to SNAI, inmates in six prisons across the country managed to capture seven police officers and 50 prison guards, JEE News reported.
“We are concerned about the safety of our personnel,” Interior Minister Juan Zapata said at a press conference in the capital, Quito.
The country, until a few years ago a peaceful haven nestled between Colombia and Peru, the world’s biggest cocaine producers, has recently been engulfed in violence as it has become a hub for drug trafficking itself.
Ecuadorian prisons have been the site of massacres by rival gangs linked to Colombian and Mexican cartels that have killed more than 430 inmates since 2021, often leaving a trail of charred and dismembered bodies. .
One of the rigged cars, a sedan, was “filled with two gas cylinders with fuel, a slow fuse and what appeared to be sticks of gunpowder,” Gen. Pablo Ramirez, head of the police’s anti-narcotics investigation, told reporters.
Firefighters who arrived at the scene revealed that there was no loss of life in the incident.
Quito Mayor Pablo Munoz said there were also three grenade explosions in the city overnight. According to RamÃrez, six people, including a Colombian citizen, were arrested at the site of one of those explosions.
He said that all have criminal history of extortion, robbery and murder.
“Three of them were arrested 15 days ago for the theft of a truck and extortion … and they were released under conditions,” Ramirez said.
