Ever since Ecuador’s most notorious gang leader vanished from his prison cell in January 2024, the mystery of his whereabouts has been the buzz of the nation.

A group of armed, masked men in Ecuador launched an audacious attack on a television station during a live broadcast and so revealed the country’s spiraling violence in the wake of an apparent recent prison escape.

Authorities in Ecuador say masked men broke onto the set of a public television channel in Ecuador waving guns and explosives during a live broadcast, prompting the president to issued a decree declaring that the violence-plagued country had entered an “internal armed conflict.”.

A convicted leader of one of the most powerful drug gangs in Ecuador has vanished from the prison where he was serving his sentence.