Ecuadorian Armed Forces Joint Command chief RADM Jaime Vela Erazo said Wednesday that the country's security forces have detained 329 alleged criminals and killed another five criminals during operations after the violent unrest broke out in the country.
"We have seized 61 pieces of weapons of various caliber, 418 rounds of ammunition, 24 explosive devices, we have detained 329 terrorists. Forty-one people have been rescued from captivity. We have eliminated five terrorists," Vela Erazo told a news conference aired by local media.
He added that Ecuador's servicepeople and police had to engage in clashes with three armed groups three times and managed to capture 28 escaped prisoners.
The Quito police said on X on Wednesday that unknown assailants had detonated an explosive device on a pedestrian bridge over the Carretera Panamericana Norte highway in Ecuador's capital, Quito, resulting in material damage. No one was injured in the incident, the police said, adding that the search for the perpetrators of "this act of terrorism" was underway.
CCTV footage circulating on social media showed pieces of the roof of a pedestrian bridge being thrown over a busy road by the explosion. Local media reported that a similar explosion had occurred at a crosswalk over the General Ruminahui toll highway at the exit from Quito.
Streets in the north and center of Quito have emptied after the unrest broke out in criminal groups' response to government action to restore order in the country's prisons, a Sputnik correspondent reported. In a conversation with the correspondent, residents of the capital said they feared a repeat of the outbursts of street violence. Their anxiety is also elevated by the government's emergency measures, which have brought the army to the cities and shifted the work of all educational institutions from full-time education to online classes.
On Monday, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency in Ecuador following prison riots and the escape of a major gang leader, Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, also known as Fito, from a jail in Guayaquil. A day later, Fabricio Colon Pico, the head of another major gang in Ecuador, Los Lobos, also escaped from detention.
On Tuesday, Noboa said that the country was in a state of "internal armed conflict" amid the hostage-taking riots in various cities and prisons and designated several organized crime groups as terrorist organizations. He also ordered the army to neutralize several criminal groups operating in the country.
The incumbent president came to power rallying to fight crime, which had reached alarming scales. Only during the latest election campaign, at least two political figures were killed.