Two uniformed agents crouch behind a wall, guns at the ready, eyeing anxiously a car parked in front of their police station after dark in the violence-ridden Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil.

Any car near a police station in these areas is viewed with suspicion after a recent spate of gun and explosive attacks was traced to a savage gang war that has killed dozens of officers since last year.

Multiple attacks this week in the city of 2.8 million killed five police officers and a civilian and injured at least 17 members of the security forces.

Officials say the attacks are an organized crime response to an ongoing mass transfer of inmates from Guayaquil’s notorious Guayas 1 prison to other prisons controlled by various gangs.

On Friday, special police units oversaw the relocation of gang leaders, although journalists and concerned family members gathered outside could hear loud detonations coming from inside the prison.

Even the police live in fear in Guayaquil, where gangs outnumber law enforcement and everything from ports to prisons is under criminal control.

So far this year, the commercial hub of Ecuador has seen 1,200 murders — 60 percent more than 2021, according to official figures.

“I saw bombs go off,” said a Guayaquil gas station attendant who declined to be named for fear of retribution.

“That’s the danger at the moment. You have to watch out for every motorcyclist: if they leave something behind or throw something… you have to watch out,” he told AFP.

Ecuador — once a relatively peaceful neighbor of major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru — has seen a spate of violent crime that authorities blame on turf wars between rival gangs linked to Mexican cartels.

President Guillermo Lasso responded to this week’s wave of attacks by declaring a state of emergency and a night curfew in the provinces of Guayas and Esmeraldas, extending to Santa Domingo de los Tsachilas on Friday.

He also ordered troops to be sent to the three provinces, home to a third of Ecuador’s 18 million people.

Guayaquil’s streets, worst hit by the violence, are largely empty at night and police are on high alert.

They patrol vans with their lights off, or barricade themselves at their command posts wearing bulletproof vests.

Streets where politicians’ homes are located are fenced off to all traffic and petrol station attendants fearfully occupy their posts after some have been targeted in the recent scaremongering campaign.

It has become a “life or death” affair, said a 21-year-old attendant, who asked not to be named and said he feared being shot by “merciless” criminals.

Lasso has vowed his government “will not capitulate to drug terrorists”.

In recent years, Ecuador has developed from a transit route for drugs into an important distribution center.

The United States and Europe are the main destinations for drugs from Latin America.

The homicide rate in Ecuador nearly doubled to 14 per 100,000 people in 2021, reaching 18 per 100,000 between January and October this year, according to official figures.

Hundreds of inmates have also died – many were beheaded or burned as a continuation of the gang war is being waged behind bars.