By Athena Papakosta

Scenes of violence and mayhem and an atmosphere that breeds terror. This is how the local as well as the largest international media describe everything unfolding in Ecuador in the last 24 hours.

As of Tuesday morning, the country had already been declared in a state of emergency for two months. The decision was announced by the newly elected president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, and according to a related executive order, the country’s armed forces have taken over the enforcement of order on the streets and in prisons.

Noboa was led to this decision following the… disappearance of the country’s number one public danger from maximum security prisons. This is the infamous “Fito” whose real name is Jose Adolfo Macias and who leads a powerful prison gang, Los Tsoneros. He is 44 years old and has been serving a 34-year prison sentence since 2011 for drug trafficking, murder and organized crime. “Fito” had also escaped in 2013 from another prison together with 17 other inmates. A few months later he was arrested at his mother’s house where he was with his brother.

As thousands of soldiers and police search for him, chaos reigns inside and outside the country’s prisons – in a show of power by his gangs in Ecuador against President Daniel Noboa who was elected last October to crack down on organized crime in the country. So far, at least seven police officers have been kidnapped while the number of correctional officers held hostage in prisons across the country is high.

At the same time, heavily armed hooded men stormed a public television station in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil, on Tuesday night. The time in Ecuador was about 2 in the afternoon and the TV network is called TC Television.

In a live broadcast, the gunmen forced the staff to lie on the floor while shouts and shots were heard. Fifteen minutes later the transmission is interrupted.

The police announce that the special forces have been deployed to the scene and entered the building 30 minutes after the armed men invaded. A woman can be heard shouting: “don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.”

The newspaper El Universo speaks of reporters and cameramen in a panic. As he points out, while the gunmen invaded the television station, the messages of the employees in group text chats were, in essence, calls for help. “They came to kill” read one message while another read “God don’t let this harm happen”.

According to the police authorities of the country, some of the perpetrators are arrested. However, as it became known, most of them escaped, taking some hostages.

After the images, panic and terror spread across the country with workers in the capital, Quito, fleeing to return and remain locked in their homes.

Although it remains – so far – unknown whether or not the break-in at the TC TV station is related to the escape and the manhunt for “Fito”, it is certainly an example of the increasingly deteriorating security situation in the country.

Ecuador is located in South America and is facing a prolonged political and social crisis with corruption, scandals, violence and crime.

Last August – in the middle of the pre-election period – the presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, fell dead after a hail of bullets. Just weeks before a crucial presidential election in Ecuador, Villavencio took on the cartels, with his killing bringing to light the country’s deep problems with organized crime. Los Lobos, the second largest gang in the country with many of its members in prison, claimed responsibility.

A month earlier, the 38-year-old mayor Agustin Idriago was also shot dead.