An explosion attributed to organized crime in Ecuador left five dead this Sunday and forced the president, Guillermo Lasso, to declare a state of exception in the coastal city of guayaquil, one of the most affected by crime linked to drug trafficking.
“I have stated in State of Exception to the city of Guayaquil due to the criminal events given in the last hours. The entire public force will be available to restore control of the city,” the president said on Twitter.
Lasso, who took office a year ago, warned: “We will not allow organized crime to try to run the country,” where the narco leaves scenes of terror in the streets with decapitated bodies hanging from bridges in the style of the Mexican cartels.
The state of exception will be in force from this Sunday in this port of 2.8 million inhabitants in the southwest of the country and will last for 30 days, the secretary said at a press conference. National Public and State Security, Diego Ordóñez.
In April, Lasso declared a 60-day state of emergency in the provinces of Esmeraldas, Manabí and Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil, due to violence linked to drug trafficking.
The explosion that occurred early this Sunday in the popular Cristo del Consuelo neighborhood left 5 dead who have been identified and have no criminal record, Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo also said at a press conference.
The official specified that because of the detonation there are 17 wounded, some with priors. “Many of them, if not most, are embracing silence and don’t want to contribute to the investigation,” he said.
Earlier, authorities had reported 20 people with injuries.
War declaration
When the incident became known, Carrillo expressed on Twitter that the explosion was “a declaration of war against the State” and attributed it to “organized crime mercenaries”.
“Either we unite to confront it (organized crime) or the price will be even higher for society,” the minister tweeted.
Research indicates that Two people on a motorcycle arrived in the neighborhood and “placed a sack” near a restaurant. inside which it is presumed that “there was a high-power explosive,” General Víctor Zárate, commander of zone 8, to which Guayaquil belongs, told the press.
The explosion affected eight homes, four vehicles and a motorcycle. The houses lost their walls and it was possible to see inside.
On the streets and cars there were fallen power lines, and a trail of blood was observed on the trunk door of a vehicle.
The government offered a reward $10,000 to those who provide information on the case.
Once-peaceful Ecuador, sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest cocaine producers, is facing rising drug-related violence. Last year the nation, with 18 million inhabitants, closed with a rate of 14 murders per 100,000 people, almost double that of 2020.
Clashes spread to prisons, where since February 2021 there have been seven massacres with nearly 400 dead inmates. The authorities consider that these are clashes between gangs linked to drug trafficking that dispute territories for sale.
The most recent report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)published in June, indicates that Ecuador in 2020 seized 6.5% of the total cocaine seized in the world.
In 2021, Ecuador seized a record 210 tons of drugs, most of them cocaine. In the first half of this year, seizures exceed 100 tons.
