Ecuador: Prison staff held hostage now free

By Heather Chen and Michael Rios, CNN

(CNN) — All prison guards and administrative employees held hostage by inmates at correctional facilities across Ecuador have now been freed, the national prisons agency said Saturday night.

The prisons agency, SNAI, did not specify how many people had been freed but said they were undergoing medical evaluations and it would investigate those responsible for their capture. Earlier on Saturday it had said 133 guards and three administrative employees were still being held after at least 41 were released.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa welcomed the news and congratulated SNAI, the armed forces and the national police for securing their release.

The National Police of Ecuador had earlier said that people had been freed from prisons in Esmeraldas city in northwestern Ecuador as well as Tungurahua province on Saturday after mediation by the Catholic church.

The agency had also reported an armed confrontation at a prison in the southern region of El Oro between inmates and members of the armed forces and the National Police.

One prison guard was killed and another was injured in the facility, SNAI said.

The hostage taking at Ecuador’s prisons comes amid a wave of violence sweeping the country that has included explosions and kidnappings of police.

In a separate incident this week, masked gunmen armed with explosives stormed the set of a live television broadcast. Television anchor Jorge Rendon described the takeover as an “extremely violent attack” and said that he knew of one person who was shot and another injured by the assailants.

The situation has struck fear among many Ecuadorians and the country is “living a real nightmare,” former President Rafael Correa said in a video shared on social media.

Ecuador, home to the Galapagos islands and a tourist-friendly dollar economy, was once known as an “island of peace,” nestled between two of the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.

But instability has been growing in the Latin American country for years.

The immediate trigger of the latest incidents was the recent escape of a high-profile gang leader, Adolfo “Fito” Macías, from a prison in the city of Guayaquil.

Fito is the leader of Los Choneros, one of Ecuador’s most feared gangs – linked to maritime drug trafficking to Mexico and the United States, that also works with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and the Oliver Sinisterra Front in Colombia, according to authorities.

He was sentenced to 34 years in prison in 2011 for crimes including drug trafficking and murder. A state of emergency was declared following his escape.

Security forces have struggled to confront prison gangs inside overcrowded facilities, where inmates often take control of branches of the penitentiaries and run criminal networks from behind bars, according to authorities.

The search for Fito continues. More than 3,000 police officers and members of the armed forces have been deployed to find him. Authorities have not yet pinpointed the exact time and date that he escaped prison.

Before his assassination at a political rally in the capital Quito last August, late presidential hopeful Fernando Villavicencio revealed he had been threatened by Fito and had been warned against continuing with his political campaign against gang violence.

Villavicencio said the country had become a “narco state” and promised a crackdown on gang crime and corruption that has gripped the country in recent years.

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