Ecuador: State of emergency in Guayas and Esmeralda provinces – 5 police officers killed by drug traffickers

Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, on Tuesday imposed a state of emergency in two coastal provinces where a wave of violence attributed to drug-trafficking gangs killed at least eight police officers a few hours earlier.

“I declare a state of emergency in the provinces of Guayas and Esmeralda and a nighttime curfew from 9 p.m.,” the head of state said during a speech broadcast live by the country’s radio and television stations.

Ecuador’s Constitution allows the head of state to declare a state of emergency and order the deployment of the military at home in cases where the country is facing serious unrest.

According to the Interior Ministry, yesterday’s attacks left at least “five dead among the police” in Guayaquil — the economic heart of the Latin American country and the capital of Guaya (southwest) — and the nearby town of Duran.

Earlier, Interior Minister Juan Zapata said two policemen were killed and two others were wounded in Guayaquil. The patrol car of the two policemen who lost their lives was attacked by gunmen, while the two policemen who were injured were inside a police station in the same city that was also attacked early yesterday, in retaliation, according to the law enforcement agencies, for switching 200 prisoners.

For its part, the Ecuadorian Penitentiary Service (SNAI) announced that eight guards were held hostage for a few hours yesterday in Esmeraldas (northwest).

“Declaration of war”

“This is a reaction of organized crime,” said Interior Minister Sapata, speaking to the press in Quito, underlining that in total, nine attacks were committed in one day.

“The eight members of the security and surveillance corps of the penitentiaries who were held (i.e. hostages) have been released,” SNAI announced via WhatsApp, without going into further details, other than that “negotiations” were held.

A video uploaded to Twitter shows two people with explosives embedded in their bodies and posing as prison officials, as an inmate complains about “corruption” in the prison system.

“If you want war, you’ll have war,” the masked man declares before threatening “we’ll blow those guards up!”.

In his address to the nation, conservative President Lasso spoke of “acts of sabotage and terrorism” which he said represented “a declaration of open war against the rule of law, the government and all of us citizens”.

The kidnapping of the guards came as SNAI was arranging the transfer of 200 inmates at the massive Guayaquil penitentiary to other prisons.

The day before Monday, two decapitated bodies were found hanging from a bridge in Esmeralda, the police announced in a country swept by a wave of violence attributed to drug-trafficking gangs.

In February, police announced that two bodies had been found hanging from a bridge in Duran. The macabre method is often used by Mexican drug cartels.

In the months that followed, there were attacks with explosive devices, most notably in August at the port of Guayaquil, where five people were killed.

Drug traffickers, some linked to Mexican cartels, have waged a merciless power struggle on the streets and in Ecuador’s prisons, where back-to-back massacres have claimed the lives of some 400 inmates since February 2021.

Between Colombia and Peru, the two countries where the largest quantities of cocaine are produced in the world, Ecuador has been transformed in recent years from part of the transit routes into a major hub for the trafficking of the white powder to the European and US markets.

In 2021, authorities announced that 210 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine, were seized, a record amount. Within this year, Quito is talking about seizures of a total of 160 tons.

RES-EMP

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