MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ecuador: 40 arrested for seizing hospital

Ecuador has become a logistic center in the trafficking chain of illicit substances, said Noboa.

Ecuadorean authorities arrested 40 gang members this past weekend after they tried to seize the José Cevallos Ruiz hospital in Yaguachi, in the province of Guayas province, killing one person and taking several hostages as one of their comrades was being treated.

Police managed to neutralize the armed attackers and rescue several victims, some of whom were reported to have been wounded.

Also this weekend, maritime authorities captured a semi-submersible off the coast of Esmeraldas province (north) carrying cocaine believed to be worth US$ 50 million. In an operation coordinated with the Colombian Navy, three Colombian nationals were arrested while 161 large packages wrapped in jute sacks, weighing 3.2 tons of controlled substances were retrieved from the 15-meter-long floating device.

Similar devices were seized in a maritime area off Galápagos in November last year with a 5-ton load, and another in 2022 with two tons.

President Daniel Noboa said in a radio interview that his country had become a logistical hub in the trafficking chain of illicit substances due to conditions such as dollarization, adequate communication routes, and thriving industries.

In this scenario, White House Advisor Christopher Dodd is to arrive in the country shortly together with Southern Command Chief General Laura Richardson and Bureau of Counternarcotics Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary Christopher Landberg to “listen and consider options for accelerating bilateral security cooperation” between the two countries, the US embassy in Ecuador said in a statement.

A total of 2,763 people have been arrested in Ecuador in the first 13 days after Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict,” including 158 people who were remanded on terrorism charges after 22 organized crime gangs were deemed terrorist groups and belligerent non-state actors. In addition, 1,003 firearms, 1,222 bladed weapons, 126 weapons feeders, more than 35,700 bullets, and 4,802 explosives have been seized.

Two people were also arrested last week in connection with the murder of Prosecutor César Suárez, who was leading the probe into the armed takeover of a public TV station in Guayaquil.

Violence escalated earlier this year when convicted gang leaders Fabricio Colón Pico and José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias Fito, escaped from jail alongside some other 90 inmates.