Despite the state of emergency that has been in force since January by order of the Government, violence in Ecuador persists. Six Ecuadorian adults and five children, who had arrived at the resort of Ayampe, in the southwest of the country, on Thursday afternoon, March 28, were kidnapped the next day by around twenty armed people who broke into their hotel.
The victims were subjected to “interrogation” and five adults were found with gunshot wounds on a nearby road, said local police commander Richard Vaca.
The tourists had no ties to criminal organizations, but the attackers “apparently confused these individuals as their adversaries in (…) the micro-trafficking dispute in the sector,” added the Police Chief.
In the capture operation, automatic rifles, pistols, explosives and ammunition were seized.
Ecuador, previously one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America, is under the yoke of criminal gangs that fight over drug trafficking routes with blood and fire. A cycle of violence that has caused an increase in the homicide rate, which went from 6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record of 43 in 2023.
President Daniel Noboa expressed his “solidarity with the families” of the victims on Saturday on his X account.
“This is a sign that narcoterrorism and its allies are looking for spaces to scare us, but they will not succeed,” the president warned.
In January, Noboa declared the nation in internal armed conflict, after a violent attack by criminal gangs that left around twenty dead, attacks on the press, explosions and more than 200 kidnappings in prisons and streets.
«What happened in Santa Elena and Manabí reminds us that the battle continues. The National Police is deployed and as a result we have captured one of the Ayampe kidnappers, we will not rest until we find the others. This is a sign that narcoterrorism and its allies are looking for spaces to scare us, but they will not succeed,” Noboa said in X.
Ecuadorian prisons are centers of operations for drug trafficking gangs linked to cartels in Colombia and Mexico. Since 2021, constant armed clashes between these criminal groups have left more than 460 prisoners dead.
Located between Colombia and Peru, the largest cocaine producers in the world, Ecuador years ago became a logistics center for shipping drugs to the United States and Europe.
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