Military personnel rescued nine people who had been kidnapped by Los Lobos, one of the main gangs allied with drug traffickers in the country, the Ministry of Defense reported on Saturday.
The victims had been detained in the city of Quevedo, in the province of Los Ríos, according to the X network.
During the operation, seven members of Los Lobos, one of the most dangerous criminal gangs in the country, shaken in recent years by drug trafficking violence, were arrested.
The Ministry of Defense released a video of the military operation in which several of the kidnapped people can be seen in a wooded area.
Los Lobos are part of around twenty drug trafficking organizations in Ecuador that are fighting over drug routes and bleeding the country dry with record levels of violence.
In early July, police rescued 49 people held captive by the criminal organisation from a mine in a southern province, where human remains were buried in the area.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is waging a war against gangs linked to Colombian cartels, the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels, as well as the Albanian mafia.
In January, the president declared that the South American country was experiencing an internal armed conflict and deployed the Armed Forces to the streets to neutralize the gangs, which his government has labeled as terrorists.
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2024-08-30 13:12:25