Why masked gang members stormed an Ecuadorian TV station

Good morning. At about 2pm local time yesterday, a live news broadcast on an Ecuadorian TV channel was interrupted by a group of masked men carrying guns, grenades, and dynamite. The intruders pointed guns at employees and made them lie on the floor. “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!” one person shouted. One of the attackers said the attack was the result of “messing with the mafias”. The TC Televisión broadcast continued for at least 15 minutes. Then the signal was cut off.

Some 13 gunmen were later arrested, and the hostages taken to safety. The astonishing scenes in the city of Guayaquil were part of a series of audacious coordinated attacks by members of Ecuadorian gangs that have killed at least 10 people. They follow the escape from prison of the country’s most feared gang leader, Adolfo Macías, and new president Daniel Noboa’s subsequent declaration of a state of emergency. And while the situation is evolving rapidly, it appears to represent a declaration of war on the country’s fragile democratic institutions.

Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s Dan Collyns, explains what we know about what just happened. Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

In depth: ‘A declaration of war on the Ecuadorian state’

About half an hour after the masked men appeared at the TV studio, armed police officers arrived on the scene and entered the building. After the perpetrators were arrested, Alina Manrique, the head of news for TC Television, told the Associated Press: “I am still in shock. Everything has collapsed … All I know is that it’s time to leave this country, and go very far away.”

Manrique’s despair points to a much larger crisis linked to the country’s rampant drug gangs. “Ecuadorians are more scared than they’ve ever been,” Dan said. “It’s only in the last few years that it has become such a violent country – people aren’t immune to it. The country is now in shock. This does feel like a declaration of war on the Ecuadorian state.”

What happened yesterday?

As well as the attack on the TV studio, a series of apparently related incidents took place across the country. At least seven police officers were kidnapped. A vehicle was set ablaze at a petrol station in the capital, Quito. Explosives were used in further attacks in the provinces of Esmereldas and Los Rios. There was a jailbreak in the town of Riobamba. Five hospitals were also overtaken.

All of this followed riots in at least six jails on Monday, with guards taken hostage and threatened with death if soldiers were deployed to retake control. Videos disseminated on WhatsApp purported to show guards being lynched, Dan said, though he cautioned they were unconfirmed.

As schools, shops and public buildings closed down, the streets were in gridlock as people fled to the safety of their homes. Ecuador’s new president, Daniel Noboa, declared a state of emergency. “We are not going to negotiate with terrorists,” he said.

The response to that from the gangs was unambiguous. In one prison video, a guard reads out a message with a gun pointed at his head: “You declared war, you will get war,” he says. “You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war.”

Who did this, and why?

The immediate spark for the chaos of the last couple of days was the escape on Sunday of convicted gang leader Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, from his cell in the prison complex in Guayaquil – the country’s largest city.

Macías is the leader of the Los Choneros gang, one of the most powerful in Ecuador, which is believed to have links to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. He was serving a 34-year prison sentence, and previously escaped for several weeks in 2013.

He is said to have been tipped off shortly before he was due to be transferred to a maximum security facility. Macías was living in a spacious cell decorated with murals and had been shown in a music video, ‘The Lion’s Ballad’, relaxing in the prison courtyard and petting a fighting cockerel (pictured above).

“That showed the amount of power these kingpins have even when they’re locked up,” Dan said. “The fact that Macías escaped is not surprising to anyone who knows how things operate in Ecuador. But the extent of the violence we’ve seen since has taken people by surprise. Whether or not it’s not co-ordinated, there are different gangs that are part of this wave of violence.”

Yesterday, Noboa decreed that 22 gangs were now classified as terrorist groups. “They want to be left alone to operate with impunity,” Dan said. “Before, where they would be killing each other, they are now collectively fighting the Ecuadorian state.”

How strong are gangs in Ecuador?

Four months ago, Dan reported from Guayaquil on Ecuador’s “nightmarish descent into violence” over recent years: the gangs have operated with impunity within the prison system there, and used jails as bases for their operations.

In Guayaquil, Dan visited the scenes of gang assassinations and met with relatives of those who had been killed. “It felt like a dark place,” he said. “It’s a bit like Manila and Miami in the same city. There are riverside slums where there are no opportunities at all which are used as routes to get drugs into containers for shipping. And at the same time you have exclusive estates where people barely go out because of the security situation. It is a very unequal city at the heart of this trade.”

There was a mass hostage-taking in six prisons in September and a wave of violence including car bombs and a dynamite attack on a bridge after a senior gang leader was transferred to a new jail. The spike in violence had led to the shocking assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was shot dead in August as he left a campaign event. Villavicencio was an anti-corruption candidate who had accused Los Choneros and Macías of threatening him in the days before he was killed.

The murder rate in Ecuador has jumped almost 500% since 2016, with police attributing 80% of the killings to gangs, according to Crisis Group. “That’s one of the highest rates in the world, even by Latin American standards,” Dan said. Local news reports regularly describe beheadings, public hangings, and police assassinations as rivals vie for control of the trade.

The rise in gang violence has been attributed to the killing of Los Choneros’ previous leader, Jorge Zambrano, in 2020. That sparked a struggle for control over drug-trafficking routes and territory. At least 400 prison inmates have died since 2021.

Meanwhile, cartels from as far afield as Mexico and Albania have sought a piece of the Ecuadorian drug trade and are financing local operations. Central to the chaos has been the export of cocaine – a major source of wealth for Ecuador’s gangs because of increased cultivation in neighbouring Colombia and years of lax policing.

How has the government responded to the violence?

Noboa (above), the centre-right 35-year-old heir to a banana fortune, won the presidency in October after Villavicencio’s assassination. He pledged a hard line on gang violence. Shortly after he took office, Jaime Enrique SC, the leader of Los Choneros splinter group Los Lobos, was arrested. That was viewed as a statement of intent and prompted reprisals against local police.

Other measures included a policy of naming judges and prosecutors who release captured gang members, and the construction of new maximum security prisons. Last week, Noboa announced plans for a referendum on further action including an expanded role for the military. In December, he proclaimed the success of his strategy, saying in an interview: “We have captured leaders of criminal groups in recent weeks, from the most important [groups]. One of the groups … has even asked for a peace deal.”

But the events of this week suggest that such optimism was premature. After the TV station was stormed, Noboa said that Ecuador was now in a state of “internal armed conflict”.

“The gangs would like to remove Noboa, because they realise that they may not be able to retain the senior institutional and judicial connections they’ve had before which have guaranteed their impunity,” Dan said. “That’s why we’ve seen this bloodbath take place.”

What else we’ve been reading

The Miles Without Stiles initiative has created over 50 new Lake District trails for wheelchair and pushchair users. Ben Aitken (above) and his friend Anthony explore one route in Windermere. Matthew

After the appointment of 34-year-old Gabriel Attal as France’s new prime minister, Angelique Chrisafis’ analysis is a useful primer on the formidable challenge awaiting him in pushing president Emmanuel Macron’s agenda. Archie

Staggering new research has shown that carbon emissions from the first two months of the war in Gaza were higher than those in 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. Nina Lakhani has the exclusive report. Matthew Pearce, newsletters team

Marina Hyde writes ferociously on the Post Office scandal, and how it suggests “a society with one rule and endless get-outs for executives, and quite another for the little people”. Archie

Have dating apps made romance just another chore? Jordyn Beazley meets the singles who have dumped swiping and are bringing speed dating back to life. Matthew

Sport

Football | Middlesbrough secured a 1-0 lead in the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final against Chelsea. A 37th-minute goal for Hayden Hackney (above) was enough to give the Championship side a narrow advantage at the Riverside.

Tennis | Emma Raducanu withdrew from a charity match on Tuesday that was to be part of her Australian Open buildup after complaining of “feeling sore”. BBC Sport reported Raducanu got up on Tuesday morning a “little sore” after a two-hour practice session on Monday and decided to rest.

Rugby | Almost 50% of match officials surveyed by the Rugby Football Union have said they have been subjected to abuse in recent seasons – prompting the introduction of stricter punishments at all levels of the game including the Premiership, the Guardian can reveal.

The front pages

The Guardian’s splash headline today is “Ex-Post Office chief hands back CBE as scandal grows”. The Times has “Post Office chief to give up her CBE”, to which the Metro says “At last”. The Daily Mail is not satisfied: “Now give back your millions”, it says, targeting Paula Vennells’s “vast bonuses and pension”. “Shameful” – the Daily Mirror is angry that Fujitsu, supplier of the faulty Horizon system, “still earns £100m a year” from UK government contracts. The i expands on that: “Post Office scandal firm Fujitsu given VIP treatment to win major new UK deals”. The Financial Times links the scandal to the prime minister: “Fujitsu won contracts on Sunak’s watch despite Post Office IT scandal”. “Architect of postal scandal demands immunity” reports the Daily Telegraph, about a person said to be the software’s developer. The Daily Express also covers the CBE handback while its front-page lead is “Rebels fire warning shot at PM over Rwanda bill”.

Today in Focus

Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

In 2008, Milda Mitkuté set up a website to sell her old clothes when she was moving house. That website became Vinted – the secondhand clothes app making a deep dent in fast fashion. The first Lithuanian “unicorn”, with 16 million UK users, is aiming to make buying secondhand the first choice.

“I like the money I get from it, but it’s more that I feel so terrible about chucking stuff away,” said Vinted user Melanie Monchar. “To be able to sell things on that haven’t been worn very much, and are still full of life, is amazing.”

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.

Quick crossword

Cryptic crossword

Wordiply