2024-01-22 17:24:53
Dozens of people were arrested on Sunday in Ecuador during an attempted attack on a hospital in the province of Guayas, in the southwest of this country that has been shaken by gang violence in an open war with power. This happened on the same day that Andean countries, meeting at a summit in neighboring Peru, established a mutual support strategy to fight organized crime.
Published on: 01/22/2024 – 16:24
2 min
The Ecuadorian police announced the arrest of 68 men belonging to a criminal organization who intended to take control of a hospital where one of the group’s members was. “We neutralized terrorist suspects who were trying to take control of a hospital in Yaguachi”indicated the police on social media.
According to authorities, the group intended “protect a member of your organization who was injured” and that he had just been admitted to that hospital early in the morning.
Also yesterday, during a police operation, 10 tons of drugs were seized near the city of Vinces in the province of Los Rios, in the west of the country.
This happened at a time when an emergency regional summit was held this Sunday in Lima, Peru, bringing together the host country together with Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia, to address the fight against organized crime.
Within the scope of this summit, participants established the creation of the first “Andean safety net” against organized crime.
According to the official declaration of this meeting, the aforementioned network will guarantee “a 24/7 service to provide and receive information and/or request information from other countries (…) about the activities of criminal groups that have, or may have, transnational operations”.
It should be noted that since the beginning of the year, Ecuador has been immersed in an open war between drug trafficking gangs and power. A situation in which President Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency and declared the country “in internal war” against the gangs that he described as “terrorists”. In this context, more than 20 thousand soldiers were deployed to the field.
Considered in the past to be a relatively safe country, in the last five years Ecuador has become a transit platform for cocaine to Europe. This phenomenon, combined with rampant poverty, meant that the homicide rate in the country rose from 6 to 46 per 100,000 inhabitants last year.
On January 9, a few days after one of the most important drug traffickers in the country escaped from prison, public television was attacked live by heavily armed men. A week later, the anti-mafia prosecutor who had been tasked with investigating this incident was shot dead in broad daylight in the center of Guayaquil, in the southwest of the country.
#Dozens #arrests #attempted #attack #hospital #Ecuador