Mexico's government ended diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police broke into the Mexican Embassy to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president, an extraordinary use of force that shocked and mystified regional leaders and diplomats.

Ecuadorian police late Friday broke through the external doors of the embassy in the capital, Quito, to arrest Jorge Glas, who had been residing there since December. Glas sought political asylum at the embassy after being indicted on corruption charges.

The raid prompted Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to announce the breaking of diplomatic relations with Ecuador on Friday evening, while his government's foreign relations secretary said the move will be challenged at the World Court in The Hague.

"This is not possible. It cannot be. This is crazy," Roberto Canseco, head of the Mexican consular section in Quito, told local press while standing outside the embassy right after the raid. "I am very worried because they could kill him. There is no basis to do this. This is totally outside the norm."

On Saturday, Glas was taken from the attorney general's office in Quito to the port city of Guayaquil, where he will remain in custody at a maximum-security prison. People who had gathered outside the prosecutor's office yelled "strength" as he left with a convoy of police and military vehicles.

Authorities are investigating Glas over alleged irregularities during his management of reconstruction efforts following a powerful earthquake in 2016 that killed hundreds of people. He was convicted on bribery and corruption charges in other cases.

The office of Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa defended the raid in a statement, saying "Ecuador is a sovereign nation" that will not "allow any criminal to stay free." López Obrador fired back, calling Glas' detention an "authoritarian act" and "a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico."

Alicia Bárcena, Mexico's secretary of foreign relations, posted on the social media platform X that a number of diplomats suffered injuries during the break-in, which she said violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Diplomatic premises are considered "inviolable" under the Vienna treaties and local law enforcement agencies are not allowed to enter without the permission of the ambassador. People seeking asylum have lived anywhere from days to years living at embassies around the world, including at Ecuador's in London, which housed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for seven years because British police could not enter to arrest him.

The decision of Ecuadorian authorities was condemned by presidents, diplomats and a regional body on Saturday.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro, writing on X, characterized the raid as "an intolerable act for the international community" and a "violation of the sovereignty of the Mexican State and international law" because "it ignores the historical and fundamental right to asylum."

The Organization of American States in a statement reminded its members, which include Ecuador and Mexico, of their "obligation" to not "invoke norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations." The organization also expressed "solidarity with those who were victims of the inappropriate actions that affected the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador."

Bárcena on Friday said Mexico would take the case to the International Court of Justice "to denounce Ecuador's responsibility for violations of international law." She also said Mexican diplomats were only waiting for the Ecuadorian government to offer the necessary guarantees for their return home.

Noboa became Ecuador's president last year as the nation battled unprecedented crime tied to drug trafficking. He declared the country in an "internal armed conflict" in January and designated 20 drug-trafficking gangs as terrorist groups that the military had authorization to "neutralize" within the bounds of international humanitarian law.

Will Freeman, a fellow of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the decision to send police to Mexico's embassy raises concerns over the steps Noboa is willing to take to get reelected. His tenure ends in 2025 as he was only elected to finish the term of former President Guillermo Lasso.

"I really hope Noboa is not turning more in a Bukele direction," Freeman said referring to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, whose tough-on-crime policies have been heavily criticized by human rights organizations. "That's to say less respectful of rule of law in order to get a boost to his popularity ahead of the elections."

Freeman added that whether Glas was abusing diplomatic protection is a "separate issue" from the decision to send police to the embassy.

"We see a pattern of that in Latin America with politicians abusing embassies and foreign jurisdictions, not to flee prosecution but to flee accountability," he said.

The Mexican Embassy in Quito remained under heavy police guard after the raid — the boiling point of recent tensions between Mexico and Ecuador. Ecuador's ministries of foreign affairs and interior did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Former Ecuadorian ambassador Jorge Icaza told AP that the raid was illegal, but he added that it is also against the law to protect "a criminal who was punished by the Ecuadorian justice system in two prominent cases."

Why is this sparking outrage on the world stage?

International law experts and leaders across the region have said that the move violated long-established international laws that few rulers have dared to breach. It's almost an unprecedented act. To date, there are only a tiny handful of cases of raids on embassies on the books.

By forcing their way into the Mexican embassy to make the arrest, Ecuadorian police effectively intruded onto Mexican sovereign territory, said Natalia Saltalamacchia, a professor on international relations at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called the break-in “a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico.”

The law Saltalamacchia, López Obrador and other leaders are citing is an accord dating back to 1963 known as the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. It sets out clear rules on “diplomatic immunity," which effectively blocks authorities from entering embassies by force, among other things.

By injuring diplomatic personnel within the embassy, Saltalamacchia said, Ecuador’s government violated another section of the accords.

“When a state like Ecuador makes decision like that, you’re really endangering all the embassies of all the states in the world” by ignoring precedent, Saltalamacchia said. “You enter into a state of anarchy, a sort of jungle law.”

The Friday night raid is a move even the region’s most-criticized governments have hesitated to take, and something Ecuador's own government once declared illegal.

Most notably – and rather ironically – the British government threatened to raid Ecuador's embassy in 2012 to go after WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, who was seeking asylum in Ecuador.

“We are deeply shocked by the British government’s threats against the sovereignty of the Ecuadorian embassy and their suggestion that they may forcibly enter the embassy," said Ecuador's government at the time. “This is a clear breach of international law and the protocols set out in the Vienna Convention."

British authorities never made good on their threat, and only a few examples of actual violations have been documented in recent decades.

Saltalamacchia cited the takeover of the American embassy in Iran in 1979, when diplomats were held hostage for 444 days. In Cuba, in 1956 before the Vienna Convention was agreed, nine people were killed in Haiti's embassy as a result of a raid by Cuban police under the Batista dictatorship.

In 1981, Cuba carried out another raid on Ecuador’s embassy to capture a number of officials seeking political refuge status.

While embassies have also been attacked and raided in countries including Lebanon, Argentina, Libya, Indonesia and Thailand, those raids were carried out largely by insurgent groups.

Saltalamacchia said by arresting Glas, Ecuador's government may have also violated a regional agreement known as the 1954 Convention on Diplomatic Asylum, which allows individuals to seek asylum in embassies.

Ecuador's presidency on Friday night also alleged that Mexico's government had “abused immunities and privileges granted to the diplomatic mission” and granted “diplomatic asylum contrary to the conventional legal framework.”