Guatemala’s interior minister said the attacks on police were probably in retaliation for Monday’s raid on a youth detention centre. <\/p>\n
The authorities in Guatemala say there has been a series of attacks on police officers after riot police stormed a youth detention centre on Monday.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Francisco Rivas said three officers had died as a result of the assaults.<\/p>\n
He said the attacks were probably in retaliation for the raid on the detention centre.<\/p>\n
It is controlled by the notorious 18th Street Gang, which is active across Central America.<\/p>\n
Mr Rivas said 13 suspected gang members had been arrested and many weapons recovered, including a grenade launcher, five assault rifles and several small-calibre weapons.<\/p>\n
The storming of the youth detention centre just outside Guatemala City was ordered after dozens of inmates rioted.<\/p>\n
They set mattresses alight, killed two guards and took four others hostage.<\/p>\n
Riot police entered the facility and rescued the hostages, but two of them died later.<\/p>\n
Members of violent street gangs make up the bulk of Guatemala’s prison population and deadly conflict inside prison walls is not uncommon.<\/p>\n
The incident came less than two weeks after 40 girls died in a fire at a state-run children’s shelter, also near Guatemala City.<\/p>\n
That fire, too, is believed to have started when a mattress was set alight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guatemala’s interior minister said the attacks on police were probably in retaliation for Monday’s raid on a youth detention centre. The authorities in Guatemala say there has been a series of attacks on police officers after riot police stormed a youth detention centre on Monday. Interior Minister Francisco Rivas said three officers had died as a result of the assaults…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}