Two car bombs exploded in the night from Wednesday to Thursday in Quito near buildings of the administration responsible for prisons, without causing any casualties.
One of the vehicles exploded in front of the headquarters of the SNAI, the organization in charge of the administration of prisons in Ecuador, the other in front of a former building of this same administration.
“It has not been an easy day,” euphemized the mayor of the capital of three million inhabitants, Pabel Muñoz, pledging to “work on all fronts so that peace and tranquility continues to reign” .
Three grenades also exploded in the city, reported the city councilor on social networks, without further details.
The two car bombs, which exploded in the same neighborhood, were carrying gas cylinders, an AFP photographer noted.
Inside one of the vehicles, there were “two gas cylinders, fuel, a slow fuse and apparently sticks of dynamite”, police director of investigations, General Pablo Ramirez, told the press. .
The police, who then reported “a second burnt vehicle”, arrested six people, including one of Colombian nationality, with a history of extortion, theft and murder, and who would be involved in these explosions, specified Mr. Ramirez.
“Three of them had been arrested a fortnight ago for the theft of a truck and kidnappings for extortion in different parts of the city, but they had been released with alternative measures”, a- he added.
The SNAI carried out a transfer of prisoners on Wednesday from one prison to another in order to avoid clashes between gangs linked to drug trafficking. According to General Ramirez, this transfer “could be” at the origin of the attacks.
In addition, hundreds of soldiers and police intervened on Wednesday to search for weapons, ammunition and explosives in a prison located in the city of Latacunga (south), one of the main in the country, the scene of deadly clashes between prisoners.
To protest against this intervention, the detainees of the Cuenca prison (region of the southern Andes) took guards hostage. “The guards retained are in good health,” SNAI said, without specifying their number or whether they were released.
Clashes between gangs in Ecuadorian prisons have claimed more than 430 lives since 2021.
“They want to intimidate the state to prevent the armed forces and the police from continuing to play their role and control the prisons,” Security Minister Wagner Bravo said on local radio.
In January 2018, a car bomb exploded outside a police barracks in an Ecuadorian town on the northern border with Colombia, injuring 23 people.
The car bombing is an unusual event in Quito, although drug trafficking has sparked a wave of violence in the country in recent years.
The epicenter of this violence is the port of Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast, but it is now felt far from the coast and as far as Quito.
The homicide rate has quadrupled since 2018 and kidnappings are commonplace.
These car bomb attacks are yet another demonstration of the power of organized crime in an increasingly violent country, once a safe haven between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine producers.
The violence escalated further with the election campaign for the October 15 presidential election. One of the main candidates, Fernando Villavicencio, was shot dead by Colombian gunmen on August 9 in Quito.
08/31/2023 23:45:20 – Quito (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
