Overview

• The explosion occurred around 20:15 local time outside Guayaquil’s Regional Prison, damaged the façade, was captured on surveillance video, and showed the driver fleeing on foot.
• One day before the blast, hitmen attempted to kill the prison’s director, who was uninjured according to Ecuador’s prison authority.
• Ecuador’s prison system remains a focal point of the security crisis, with roughly 600 inmate deaths since 2021 and fresh massacres reported this week.
• In Mexico, a judge ordered preventive detention for 12 alleged members of the Los Aparicio cell in Morelos, and the Navy reported the capture in Ecatepec of a Colombian woman identified as ‘La Güera,’ a presumed leader of La Chokiza.
• Transnational investigations advanced as Argentina received Lázaro Víctor Sotacuro, the fifth detainee in the Florencio Varela triple femicide case, while Peru logged an explosive attack on a nightclub gate in Laredo and police pursued multiple robbery cases.