- choice of words
- BBC News World
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Car bombs were used in synchronized attacks.
Two Ecuadorian provinces experienced 24 hours of terror when armed gangs carried out synchronized attacks that President Guillermo Lasso described as a “declaration of war” against the rule of law, government and citizens.
The president has ordered a new state of emergency in Guayas and Esmeraldas for 45 days, which includes a curfew from nine in the evening to five in the morning.
According to the newspaper El Universo, there are so far five dead policemenkilled while patrolling the streets of these two provinces.
Most of the attacks took place between 1 and 3:30 a.m. and involved the detonation of explosive devices and car bombs around gas stations, bus terminals and police stations.
As Valentina Oropeza, BBC Mundo’s special correspondent for Guayaquil, pointed out in September, “The Ministry of the Interior and the National Police registered 145 attacks with explosives in Ecuador between January and August this year, a record in the country’s history. 72 of of them, almost half, happened in Guayaquil.”
Attacks continued in the afternoon, for example in front of the municipal building in Durán, a city neighboring Guayaquil, which has the second highest homicide rate in the country, according to the GK media house.
Transfers “for repairs”
The attacks would be – according to the local press – the response of groups linked to drug trafficking to the transfer of hundreds of prisoners from the Penal del Litoral, located in Guayaquil and the scene bloody riots in the last two years (in September 2021, about 120 prisoners died in this prison).
The newspaper El Universo reported pamphlets attributed to the Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones gangs who warned last Monday that they would use their logistical power and weapons if they “touched” their people in pavilions 8 and 9 of the penitentiary.
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Relatives of prisoners in Penal del Litoral have gathered in front of the penitentiary since Monday.
It is still not known to which other rehabilitation centers the prisoners were taken, whose transfer SNAI (National Service for Comprehensive Care for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Juvenile Offenders) attributed to “repairs in pavilions”.
“We don’t know where they are being taken, they are sending them to die,” said one of the relatives who gathered on the outskirts of the coastal prison from the night of October 31 at the first news of the transfer and in fear of new prison massacres that left behind more of 400 dead in Ecuador since 2020.
Meanwhile, at the rehabilitation center in Esmeraldas seven prison officers were kidnapped by the prisoner and later released.
“discomfort”
In this context of violence, the president interrupted his family vacation in the American Orlando, for which he was criticized on social networks due to the state of violence in the country, and moved to Guayaquil – the capital of the province of Guayas. the government’s response to this latest wave of attacks.
According to Lasso, what happened in these 24 hours “clearly shows borders that transnational organized crime is willing to take over”.
image source, Getty Images
President Lasso has declared several states of emergency starting in 2020, but the violence does not stop in the country.
“Drug crime feels uncomfortable and expresses its discomfort through violence,” the president added, attributing the response of armed groups to his government’s fight against drug trafficking.
As reported by Valentina Oropeza, Ecuador in 2022 appears as third country where more cocaine is seized after Colombia and the United States, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs.
Guayaquil, the country’s largest seaport, is also the main port of departure for drugs that sail across the Pacific to the north of the American continent.
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