By: The opinion Posted Aug 31, 2023, 12:09 pm EDT
After the explosion of a car bomb was revealed on Wednesday night in a commercial area of Quito, the country’s authorities reported a second vehicle that also exploded in the capital.
Like the first case, the unit had gas cylinders inside and was stationed outside the building of the National Service for Comprehensive Care for Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), that is, the state department in charge of the control and custody of prisons in Ecuador.
According to the Police, the explosion only caused material damage to the property, and the corresponding investigations are already being carried out to find those responsible.
On this day of violence, the television channel Teleamazonas broadcast pictures of a burned truckwith the gas cylinders, in front of a university, in an area near the site where the first vehicle exploded last night.
Citizens who live in the sector alerted at dawn about the explosion, which occurred about two hours after the explosion of the first car bomb, according to EFE.
In this regard, the mayor of Quito, Pabel Muñoz, told Teleamazonas that since Wednesday there has been “a complex and strange day and dawn”, beginning with the controlled detonation of three grenades in an area of Quito.
Subsequently, the explosion of the first car bomb was recorded, and it is now known that during the early hours of Thursday there was a second explosion from another vehicle.
Organized crime reprisals
For his part, Police General Pablo Ramírez attributed the attack to an alleged retaliation by organized crime for a series of transfers of prisoners carried out between different prisons on Wednesday.
With that seeks to disarm criminal gangs that control prisonsand avoid new massacres such as those that since 2020 have left more than 400 prisoners murdered due to clashes between these criminal groups.
According to EFE, the Latacunga, Cuenca and Azogues prisons are allegedly controlled by the criminal gang The Wolvesamong whose leaders is Luis Arboleda, better known as “Gordo Luis”, arrested in July in Colombia and, according to an unofficial source, transferred to the maximum security prison of La Roca.
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