Police special forces later arrested all the masked gunmen who invaded the headquarters of the TC Televisión network in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, at about 2pm local time on Tuesday.

There were unconfirmed reports of armed men entering a university in Guayaquil and looting in downtown Quito, as well as social media videos apparently showing the lynching of prison guards held hostage by inmates.

Shortly after the assault on the TV station, President Daniel Noboa issued a decree designating 20 drug trafficking gangs as terrorist groups and authorizing Ecuador’s military to “neutralize” the crime factions “within the bounds of international humanitarian law”.

The move came only a day after Noboa, who was elected in October on the promise to crack down on violent crime, declared a state of emergency following the escape from prison of the country’s most dangerous gang leader.

Noboa, who was elected in October on the promise to crack down on violent crime, declared a two-month state of emergency late on Monday, vowing to take back control of the country’s prisons, which have repeatedly been the scenes of brutal violence between warring drug gangs that has killed more than 420 inmates since 2021.

Ecuador’s prosecutor’s office has linked Colón, a leader of the Los Lobos gang, to the assassination of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and death threats against the attorney general, Diana Salazar.

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