One of Guatemala's most-feared gangs, Barrio 18, has launched a wave of murderous attacks on police across the country following the storming of a detention center overrun by its jailed members, officials have said.
Police are on "maximum alert" after at least nine assaults on police stations that have killed three officers and wounded seven, according to Interior Minister Francisco Rivas.
Thirteen suspected gang members have been arrested in the wake of the attacks, and weapons including a grenade launcher, five assault rifles, four pistols and two bulletproof jackets seized, along with several vehicles, he said yesterday.
He called the attacks a "reaction by organized crime" to Monday's raid on the detention center.
The storming of the Stage II facility in San Jose de Pinula, just outside Guatemala City, was ordered after dozens of Barrio 18 inmates rioted and killed two guards and took four others hostage.
The building was technically a detention center for juvenile offenders, but many of the nearly 200 males held inside were aged over 18.
Twenty of the tattooed Barrio 18 inmates linked to the guards' murders appeared in court yesterday, wearing white t-shirts and with their hands cuffed. Police stood guard behind them.
President Jimmy Morales had hailed the raid on Monday that freed the four guards.
But that congratulatory message soon turned sour. Hospital officials yesterday confirmed that two of the guards had died from their wounds. Of the two others, one was in a critical condition and the other in a stable condition.
Officials said the fatal wounds had been inflicted on the guards by the inmates. But Castillo had said Monday, at the height of the hostage stand-off and before the police raid, that the four guards "are well -- beaten up, but OK."
During the storming of the blue-and-white detention center, journalists outside its barbed wire-topped fence had heard detonations and screams inside the building.
The deaths, and the subsequent attacks on police, robbed Morales of a relatively successful denouement to the detention center riot.
He and his administration are under considerable public pressure and criticism over the poor conditions and treatment of minors held in government-run facilities.
That is because of a fire in a children's shelter close by the Stage II detention center in the same town less than two weeks ago that killed 40 teenage girls.
The minors being held in the Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home had long complained of mistreatment by staff, including sexual abuse.
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