Police Killed, Guards Held In Gang Violence-stricken Ecuador

Two police officers were killed, two more wounded and prison guards taken hostage Tuesday in the latest wave of attacks in a deadly gang war consuming Ecuador, authorities said

Quito, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 1st Nov, 2022 ) :Two police officers were killed, two more wounded and prison guards taken hostage Tuesday in the latest wave of attacks in a deadly gang war consuming Ecuador, authorities said.

Officials said "organized crime" groups responded to the transfer of detainees from the Guayas 1 prison with nine attacks using explosives and firearms.

The prison, in the southwestern port city of Guayaquil, is one of the main scenes of a series of bloody prison massacres that have left about 400 inmates dead since February 2021.

"We have had reactions" of "organized crime" in Guayaquil and in the northwestern oil port of Esmeraldas, Interior Minister Juan Zapata told reporters in the capital, Quito.

These included car bomb attacks.

In the early morning hours, two police officers died when their patrol car was attacked by people with firearms in Guayaquil, according to police.

A separate attack on a police station in Guayaquil left two officers injured.

In Esmeraldas -- the same city where two beheaded bodies were found hanging from a pedestrian bridge on Monday -- inmates took eight guards hostage, according to the SNAI prison authority.