MEXICO CITY (apro).- Violence broke out in Quito during the night of Wednesday the 30th to Thursday the 31st, when two vehicles, a compact car and a truck, exploded a few hours apart in the heart of the Ecuadorian capital, without causing any deaths or injuries. injured.
The first explosion occurred around 8:00 p.m. local time on Wednesday the 30th in the La Mariscal neighborhood in front of a building that housed the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI); the second around 2:00 a.m. on Thursday the 31st, in front of the current headquarters of the same institution responsible for the operation of the prisons.
The second car bomb exploded around two in the morning on an avenue near universities and colleges; A truck with the same explosive charge as the first car bomb was placed and detonated in front of the SNAI headquarters.
The Director of Intelligence of the National Police, Pablo Ramírez, reported that in both cases gas tanks, slow fuses and dynamite cartridges were used.
He added that six people traveling aboard a vehicle were detained as suspects; He explained that the detainees, one of Colombian origin, have criminal records and three had been provisionally released just two weeks ago.
Gangs and prisons, at the origin of violence
Ecuador has been experiencing an escalation of violent actions perpetrated by organized crime gangs for months, particularly in the cities of the Ecuadorian coast, but Quito for a long time seemed to be a safe haven in the country.
Police versions explain that a rupture between the criminal gangs operating in the country caused a severe prison crisis with several confrontations between prisoners in different detention centers.
President Guillermo Lasso decreed a state of emergency in prisons as of July 24 and ordered the deployment of operations in prisons in search of weapons, municipalities and explosives, as well as to relocate prisoners in order to avoid confrontations between internal.
On Wednesday the 9th, the presidential candidate of the Construye and Gente Buena movements was assassinated in Quito. Fernando Villavicencio, a crime that caused anxiety in Quito and was claimed by the Los Lobos gang, associated with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which led President Lasso to declare a state of emergency in the country.
In one of the prison operations, police and soldiers showed up at a prison located in the city of Latacunga, in southern Ecuador, and in protest of this intervention, inmates from the city of Cuenca detained prison guards.
This Wednesday the 30th, at the Cotopaxi prison, about 100 kilometers from the capital, groups of police and military personnel came to carry out another transfer of prisoners.
Among the transferred inmates is Luis Arboleda, Fatsecond in command of the Los Lobos gang, associated with the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel; Fat He is considered a key player in the investigation of the murder of candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
On the same Wednesday the 30th, in the Ayacucho sector, in an action that the authorities linked to the transfer of El Gordo, the Intelligence police located three grenades that attempted to be detonated by unknown persons in the Ayacucho sector, reported the Secretary of Security of Quito, Carolina Andrade.
In turn, the mayor of Quito, Pabel Muñoz, pointed out that on Wednesday the 30th forest fires started in 17 different points and declared that “unusual movements of people on motorcycles around the fires; “We are monitoring all the parks because the fires could have been motivated.”
The authorities do not rule out that the explosions of the two car bombs in Quito are precisely related to the inspections in prisons and the relocation of prisoners, and in particular with the transfer of Luis Arboleda, Fat.
Concerns throughout Ecuador increase as October 15, the date of the presidential election, approaches.
