Ecuador police have arrested seven gunmen who stormed a hospital in an attempt to kill a teenage boy undergoing treatment.
The assailants took nurses hostage and exchanged fire with police before they were detained.
Officials have said that all hostages were freed and no one was injured in the attack, as reported by BBC.
The 17-year-old boy who was the target of the attack is popularly known as “Dirty Face“, and is said to be a rival gang member of the attackers.
He is currently in intensive care at the hospital in the town of Chone, in western Ecuador, recovering from bullet wounds.
The gunmen held five staff members, hostage, for more than an hour, an employee told the local newspaper El Diario.
Videos circulating on social media show balaclava-clad men holding guns and even shoving a screaming woman through one of the hospital’s exit doors before dragging her back into the building.
Other hospital employees said that they locked themselves in rooms as the attackers broke down doors searching for Dirty Face.
“They didn’t know the hospital layout, it seems, and that’s why these delinquents were roaming through the entire hospital,” Homero Andrade, who represents employees at the hospital, told El Diario, as reported by the BBC.
“Thanks to God and to the police we’re still here to tell the tale,” Andrade added. Ecuador President Guillermo Lasso also thanked the police, saying that their intervention had saved lives.
What is the history?
Gang violence in Ecuador has grown sharply in recent years. Analysts have attributed the spike to violent Mexican cartels expanding to Ecuador where they recruit local gangs to smuggle cocaine.
Gruesome tactics used by these include decapitations, and there has also been a series of deadly prison riots.
