Police in Ecuador have arrested seven gunmen who stormed a hospital in an attempt to kill a teen being treated there.
Gang members took nurses hostage and exchanged fire with police before they were detained.
All hostages were freed and no one was injured, officials said.
The 17-year-old target of the attack, known as “Dirty Face”, is thought to be a rival gang member who is in intensive care recovering from bullet wounds.
The gunmen held five staff members hostage for more than an hour, one employee told local newspaper El Diario.
Video circulating on social media appears to show balaclava-clad men holding guns and briefly shoving a screaming woman through one of the hospital’s exit doors before dragging her back into the building.
Other hospital employees at the hospital in the town of Chone, in western Ecuador, said they had locked themselves in rooms while the gunmen broke down doors in search for the teenager.
“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.
Credit: bbc.com
