Star Metro - Soldiers enter key Ecuador prison amid war on narcos

Video released by the army showed hundreds of soldiers pouring into the prison, from which gang boss Adolfo Macias, alias "Fito", escaped last week.

The jailbreak sparked a government crackdown and, in turn, fierce retaliation from the criminal groups who have made Ecuador a hub for the global export of cocaine from neighboring countries.

"Army and police personnel are carrying out a new intervention" to "control the external and internal perimeters of the penitentiary center," the army said in a press release.

The operation comes a day after a prosecutor was gunned down in his car in Guayaquil, the latest in a series of high-profile assassinations in Ecuador.

Police Commander General Cesar Zapata said on social media Thursday that two suspects had been arrested.

He said "evidence" against them included a rifle, two pistols, a firearm charger and two cars.

The slain prosecutor, Cesar Suarez, had been charged with leading the investigation into last week's dramatic, live-broadcast assault by gangsters on a state-owned TV studio, also in Guayaquil.

- 'State of war' -

Once considered a bastion of peace in Latin America, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.

In response to the escape of Fito, President Daniel Noboa imposed a state of emergency and nightly curfew.

Drug cartels reacted swiftly, threatening to execute civilians and security forces and taking hostage dozens of police and prison officials, since released.

On January 9, attackers stormed the TV station, firing gunshots and forcing staff to lie on the ground as a woman could be heard pleading: "Don't shoot, please don't shoot."

Police entered the studio after about 30 minutes of chaos, arresting 13 assailants, many of them teenagers.

The live-televised attack caused widespread panic across Ecuador, with people leaving work early to seek shelter at home.

Noboa then declared the country in a "state of war."

- Prosecutors targeted -

Attorney General Diana Salazar said the murdered prosecutor, Suarez, had received death threats from the powerful Los Lobos (The Wolves) gang -- whose boss Fabricio Colon also escaped from prison last week.

Suarez had also investigated cases involving the infiltration of the mafia into the judicial system, and corruption scandals linked to the purchases of medical equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prosecutors have become a particular target of the gangs.

In June last year, Leonardo Palacios was mowed down in the town of Duran, near Guayaquil, and in 2022, two prosecutors and a judge were shot dead in other parts of the country.

Anti-graft and anti-cartel presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was killed in a barrage of automatic gunfire after a campaign speech just weeks before elections last year, won by Noboa.

A.Desjardins--SMC