Hitmen gunned down an Ecuadoran air drive colonel Friday in a metropolis laborious hit by drug crime that has turned the once-peaceful South American nation into probably the most violent, authorities mentioned.
Police mentioned Colonel Porfirio Cedeño, who led an air drive particular operations unit, was the passenger in a van taking him to a army ceremony.
Greater than 20 pictures have been fired and the motive force was hit within the leg within the assault within the metropolis of Guayaquil, mentioned police official Santiago Tuston.
Cedeño was touring from Guayaquil to town of Manta about three hours away. Each cities have been caught up in combating between rival drug gangs which has seen murder charges in Ecuador soar.
The van ended up stalled in the midst of the highway with damaged home windows and riddled with bullet holes, AFP noticed.
ENRIQUE ORTIZ/AFP through Getty Photographs
Police recovered greater than 20 bullet casings on the scene. Investigators imagine the gunmen have been additionally touring by automobile.
In a message on social media, ex-president Rafael Correa paid homage to his “expensive good friend” Cedeño, who had served as a member of his safety staff.
Ecuador is house to an estimated 20 felony gangs employed in trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, sowing terror within the nation of 18 million squeezed between the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.
Final month, the army mentioned a chief of considered one of Ecuador’s largest crime syndicates, Los Lobos, was arrested at his house within the coastal metropolis of Portoviejo. The U.S. final 12 months declared Los Lobos to be the biggest drug trafficking group in Ecuador, which has gone from being considered one of South America’s most secure nations to amongst its most violent in just some years resulting from a surge in narcotics operations.
Lately, the South American nation has been plunged into violence by the speedy unfold of transnational cartels that use its ports to ship medication to the US and Europe.
In 2023, the nation registered a file 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “inside armed battle” after a brutal wave of violence, sparked by the jailbreak of a robust crime boss.
The transfer got here after gunmen stormed and opened fireplace in a TV studio and bandits threatened random executions of civilians and safety forces. A prosecutor investigating the assault was later shot lifeless.
