Masked gunmen broke into a live television studio in Ecuador and threatened terrified staff.
One cameraman was shot in the leg, and another’s arm was broken in the attack, the deputy director of news said.
Employees were forced on to the floor during the broadcast by the public television channel TC in the city of Guayaquil before the live feed cut out.
Police say they later freed all the staff and made 13 arrests. The station said two employees were injured.
At least 10 people have been killed since a 60-day state of emergency began in Ecuador on Monday.
The emergency was declared after a notorious gangster vanished from his prison cell. It is unclear whether the incident at the TV studio in Guayaquil was related to the disappearance from a prison in the same city of the boss of the Choneros gang, Adolfo MacÃas Villamar, or Fito as he is better known.
In neighbouring Peru, the government ordered the immediate deployment of a police force to the border to prevent any instability crossing into the country.
The US has said it condemns the “brazen attacks” in Ecuador and is “co-ordinating closely” with President Daniel Noboa and his Ecuadorean government and stands “ready to provide assistance”.
A surge in violence in the Andean nation, inside and outside its prisons, has been linked to fighting between drug cartels, both foreign and local, over control of cocaine routes to the US and Europe.
During Tuesday’s assault at the TV station, one gunman pointed a pump-action shotgun at the head of one of the captives, who was also threatened with a revolver.
A woman could be heard pleading, “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot,” AFP news agency reports, while a person could be heard screaming in apparent pain.
“Please, they came in to kill us,” a TC employee told AFP in a WhatsApp message. “God don’t let this happen. The criminals are on air.”
Posting video of the suspects arrested on social media – and their weapons – police said the perpetrators would be “punished for terrorist acts”.
President Noboa said on Tuesday that an “internal armed conflict” now existed in the country and he was mobilising the armed forces to carry out “military operations to neutralise” what he called “transnational organised crime, terrorist organisations and belligerent non-state actors”.
He was responding to a wave of recent jail riots and escapes from prisons and other acts of violence blamed by authorities on criminal gangs.
His decree listed the Choneros (named after the town of Chone in Manabi Province) as well as 21 other gangs: the Aguilas, AguilasKiller, AK-47, Caballeros Oscuros, ChoneKiller, Covicheros, Cuartel de las Feas, Cubanos, Fatales, Ganster, Kater Piler, Lagartos, Latin Kings, Lobos, Los p.27, Los Tiburones, Mafia 18, Mafia Trebol, Patrones, R7 and Tiguerones.
The order built on the state of emergency declared on Monday, which ordains a nightly curfew in an attempt to curb violence following Fito’s escape. Security forces have been trying to re-establish order in at least six jails where riots broke out on Monday.
Eight people were killed and three injured in attacks linked to criminal gangs in Guayaquil on Tuesday while two police officers were killed by “armed criminals” in the nearby town of Nobol, police said.
In the city of Riobamba, nearly 40 inmates, including another convicted drug lord, broke out of a prison.
At least seven police officers were also kidnapped and a video circulating on social media shows three of the kidnapped officers sitting on the ground with a gun pointed at them as one is forced to read a statement addressed to President Noboa, AFP reports.
“You declared war, you will get war,” the officer reads out. “You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war.”
Police have ordered the evacuation of the government compound in Quito over security concerns,
Quito residents told Reuters news agency the city was in chaos since news of the attack at the TV station in Guayaquil.
REUTERS
