2023-08-26 13:14:47
MADRID, 26 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The joint operation launched on Friday by the Armed Forces and the National Police in the Litoral Penitentiary, the largest prison complex in the country, has resulted in the seizure of weapons and ammunition, although in a lower figure than that of previous interventions.
Some 1,700 troops registered two pavilions in the Guayas center and a third in La Roca. The official balance of seizures released late on Friday reports more than 1,100 ammunition, 1.6 kilos of drugs, eight grenades and one hundred mobile phones or communication equipment.
The Armed Forces have emphasized that the seizure “evidences the decrease in illegal objects” compared to other operations, in an attempt to show that the measures adopted by the Government of Guillermo Lasso would be working.
Lasso decreed a state of emergency in the entire Ecuadorian prison system in July. “Within the framework of the state of emergency, we continue working to remove all weapons from this prison and reduce violence,” he said Friday on social networks.
The Litoral Penitentiary was the scene of a massacre in July that resulted in more than thirty deaths, within the framework of an escalation of violence throughout the country attributed to the confrontation between gangs and which had among its most tragic moments the murder of politician Fernando Villavicencio, candidate for the presidential elections.
Lasso has promised to continue fighting “firmly” against crime “until the last day” of his government. “Sure to act with the weight and force that the Constitution and the laws give us, he proclaimed in his message, less than a week after the first round of the elections took place.
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