We begin in Ecuador, where police have detained a group of armed men who interrupted a live television program a day after the President declared a nationwide state of emergency. The men wearing balic lovers burst into the studio of a public television station in the port city of Guayaquil, taking hostage several journalists and staff members. This footage shows the attackers carrying rifles and grenades, forcing the crew onto the ground. The President has now said that Ecuador is in a state of internal armed conflict. Iony Wells reports from São Paulo.

A moment of utter horror, broadcast live on television. Arms men with Balaclavas over their face broke into the set of this public television channel in Ecuador while it was live on air, brandishing guns and what appears to be explosives. It comes a day after the country's new President President Daniel Noboa, declared a state of emergency yesterday. Ecuador has been rocked by a series of attacks after the apparent escape of a powerful gang leader, Jose Adolfo Macias, from prison. The President ordered the military and police to intervene in controlling prisons in an attempt to tame the violence. But the violence has exploded further since then. Explosions in the streets, police officers carrying out stop and search, some, reportedly, being abducted. For ordinary people in Ecuador, terror on the streets.

I hope that this state of emergency yields results, positive results for the population, not for the criminals.

We live in constant fear because on a day-to-day basis, when we go out to work, we don't know if we'll return or if we'll come back home in one piece.

The suspects tonight have now been detained. But with Ecuador still on high alert, fear for citizens there remains. Ione Welles, BBC News, São Paulo.

Carolina Loza is Ecuadorian freelance journalist who has been following the developments, and she told me about the mood in the country.

It's utter chaos. Basically, the two main cities, people are having even trouble getting back home, trying to get their kids back home from school. Government offices shut down. Also, universities did the same. So people are just desperately Really trying to get home. In smaller cities in the country, the uncertainty rains as well. So many people are trying to get home as fast as possible, look themselves up and see what happens next. Nobody expected this level of coordinated violence. We had seen a burst of violence after something that happened, whether it was prison riots or a transfer of an important gang inmate from one person to another, but nothing at the level that we have seen today in the country.

Do we know who might be behind all this?

This is one of the most worrying components of it. We do not know. There's a link between Los Choneros and Fito, who was the that was that that escaped from prison yesterday and where all this started to happen. However, there's not one group that claims responsibility. It is coordinated, of course. However, there are so many groups of factions, fighting, or creating alliances with these criminal gangs that it is very difficult to pinpoint one specific group doing this. This is what adds to that level of uncertainty and lack of control from the central government that Ecuadorians are getting fed up with in showing their anger today, whether it's through social media or talking to people on the streets who are tired of this uncertainty and that there's no clear responsible for this level of chaos.