Twisted videos circulating on social media showed how masked thugs delighted in subjecting prison staff to extreme violence, including being shot and hanging.

Terrified citizens meanwhile are resorting to taking up arms in an attempt to defend themselves, according to various reports on social media, as Ecuador’s military and armed police battle with gangs in the streets who are torching cars and conducting executions in broad daylight.

President Daniel Noboa, who took office in November promising to tackle a growing security problem caused by drug trafficking gangs, on Tuesday named 22 gangs as terrorist organisations, making them official military targets.

The hostage-takings, which began in the early hours of Monday, and the apparent escape of Los Choneros gang leader Adolfo Macias – aka ‘Fito’ – from prison over the weekend, spurred Noboa to declare a 60-day state of emergency.

But Ecuador’s increasingly powerful gangs and cartels rose up immediately, detonating a series of explosions around the country and staging a dramatic takeover of a TV station by gunmen live on air.

Authorities have said little about the prison hostages, but a SNAI prisons statement said: ‘The national police and the armed forces are working to safeguard the integrity of the employees of the prison security service who are being held… We are awaiting official information about the situation.’

Ecuadorian soldiers have been rounding up and viciously beating suspected gang members, video appears to show, as cartels paraded hostages, executed cops and declared war – plunging the South America nation into lawless chaos.

At least 10 people have already been killed in a series of attacks blamed on gangs – eight in Guayaquil, and two ‘viciously murdered by armed criminals’ in the nearby town of Nobol, police said Tuesday.

pll/rgh/avr