Friday, the hired killers killed a colonel of the Air Force of the Ecuador in a city harshly touched by the crime of the drug which transformed the South American country formerly peaceful in one of the authorities more violent.
Police said Colonel Porfirio Cedeño, who led a special Air Force operations unit, was the passenger of a van who took him to a military ceremony.
More than 20 shots were fired and the driver was hit in the leg during the attack on the city of Guayaquil, said Santiago Taston, police manager.
Cedeño went from Guayaquil to the city of Manta at around three o’clock. The two cities were taken in the fighting between the rival drug gangs which have experienced homicide rates in equator.
The van found itself blocked in the middle of the road with broken windows and riddled with ball holes, AFP observed.
Enrique Ortiz / AFP via Getty Images
The police recovered more than 20 balls of bullets on the scene. Investigators believe that armed men were also traveling by car.
In a Message on social networksEx-president Rafael Correa paid tribute to his “dear friend” Cedeño, who had been a member of his security team.
The equator houses around 20 criminal gangs used in traffic, removal and extortion, sowing terror in the country of 18 million people between the world’s largest producers of cocaine, Peru and Colombia.
Last month, the army declared a Leader of one of the largest unions in Ecuador’s crimeLos Lobos, was arrested at his home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. THE The United States last year said Los Lobos Being the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador, which has gone from one of the most stable nations in South America among its most violent in a few years due to an increase in drug operations.
In recent years, the South American nation has been plunged into violence by the rapid spread of transnational cartels that use its ports to send drugs to the United States and Europe.
In 2023, the country recorded a record of 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa said State of “internal armed conflict” After a wave of brutal violence, triggered by the jailbreak of a powerful boss of the crime.
The move came after Armed men stormed and opened fire In a television studio and bandits have threatened random executions of civilians and security forces. A prosecutor investigating the assault was later fell.
