Ecuador President safe after police uprising

Ecuador President Rafael Correa was back at work yesterday under tight security after loyalist troops rescued him from a police mutiny in a day of gunfire and street clashes that left two dead.

“No-one can pass. That’s the order from the top,” said one soldier standing guard outside the presidential palace.

Even Mr Correa’s supporters, thousands of whom had celebrated the President’s return late Thursday, were not allowed to approach the building.

The leftist President, who has been in office since 2007, was “safe and well,” a sombre police chief Freddy Martinez said, adding he would be offering his resignation after the uprising.

Interior Minister Gustavo Jalkh said the police forces had returned to work, saying Thursday had been “an unfortunate, critical, chaotic” day.

By yesterday, a relative calm had returned to the streets of the capital, Quito, a day after the city descended into chaos when protesting police besieged Mr Correa inside a hospital for some 12 hours. Hustled to safety by troops and an elite police special operations unit under cover of darkness late on Thursday, Mr Correa was given a hero’s welcome by cheering supporters when he appeared later on a balcony. And he vowed he would never negotiate under pressure, and to purge the police force, which has some 40,000 members.

The rescue capped a day of drama that began early on Thursday when police, angered over a law that would cut their seniority bonuses, rose up in rebellion and seized barracks in Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca. Mr Correa went to the police barracks to face down the mutineers, telling them he would not back down.

“If you want to kill the President, he is here. Kill him if you want. Kill him if you can. Kill him if you are brave enough, instead of hiding in the crowd,” he challenged the crowd.

But tempers flared and the President was hustled out when scuffles erupted and tear gas exploded near him. Overcome by the fumes, he was taken out by stretcher to the nearby hospital.

Once inside, though, Mr Correa was unable to leave, surrounded by hostile police as clashes broke out in the streets and rebels stormed the Congress and seized the main international airport for several hours.

The government declared a state of emergency and ordered the military to restore order. The Red Cross said two police were killed and 37 people wounded in the operation to free Correa from the National Police Hospital.

Police chief Martinez blamed elements seeking to destabilise the police force for the revolt, and said it was “time to submit my resignation”.

Mr Correa, 47, a leftist ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, charged that the rebellion was an attempted coup by elements of police and the military loyal to former President Lucio Gutierrez, a retired colonel overthrown in 2005.

Interviewed by CNN in Brazil, Mr Gutierrez denied “the cowardly, false, reckless accusations of President Correa”.

The unrest, which recalled a military-backed coup against the elected President in Honduras last year, sent shock waves through Latin America.