Blasts rock Quito, inmates take 57 guards hostage

Grenades and car bombs have exploded in Ecuador's capital, followed by inmates in six prisons taking hostage 57 guards in an apparent retaliation for crackdowns on jail weapons and transfer of notorious prisoners.

One of the explosions outside the headquarters of the SNAI prisons authority on Wednesday night was caused by a car rigged with "two gas cylinders with fuel, a slow fuse and apparently dynamite sticks," the police's anti-drug investigations boss, General Pablo Ramirez, told reporters Thursday.

The other car bomb detonated at a building that formerly housed SNAI offices.

Three grenade explosions also hit the capital city, Quito Mayor Pabel Muñoz said.

No one was hurt in the explosions.

Six people, including a Colombian national, were arrested near the scene of one of these explosions, according to Ramirez.

The official said an inmate transfer and the police raid of a prison in the southern city of Latacunga to search for weapons, ammunition and explosives earlier Wednesday may have triggered the blasts.

Inmates in Cuenca — hundreds of kilometers away from Latacunga — and jails in five other unnamed locations then took dozens of prison guards hostage.

"They want to intimidate the state to prevent us from continuing to fulfill the role of the armed forces and the police in controlling these penitentiary centers," Security Minister Wagner Bravo told FM Mundo radio.

The condition of the hostages is unknown but Interior Minister Juan Zapata expressed concern over their safety during a press conference in the capital Quito.

Meanwhile, six people, including a Colombian national, were arrested near the scene of one of the explosions, according to Ramirez.

WITH AFP