QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuadorian officials said Monday they have deployed 75,000 soldiers and police to four crime-ridden provinces where the government is imposing a nighttime curfew that bans people from leaving their homes from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Curfews were imposed in Guayas, El Oro, Los Rios and Santo Domingo de los Chachiras on Sunday night, and a total of 253 people were arrested for violating the curfew, officials said. The curfew is expected to last for two weeks. While the orders cover Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populous city, they do not extend to Quito or the tourist resorts of the Galapagos Islands.
Interior Minister John Remberg said on Monday that the Ecuadorian military used authorized artillery to destroy three identified targets, but he did not provide specific details on the nature of the attacks. “Whatever should fall, will fall – whatever should fall, will fall,” he told reporters, noting that there were no casualties in the operation.
Ecuador is struggling to curb drug violence as rival drug cartels vie for control of coastal ports used to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
Last year, Ecuador’s homicide rate hit its highest in decades, with 50 murders per 100,000 residents, according to the interior ministry.
Ecuador’s homicide rate has increased fivefold since the COVID-19 pandemic, with drug cartels from Colombia and Mexico fighting for access to the country’s drug trafficking routes and working with local gangs.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa recently extended a state of exception that allows the military to conduct joint patrols with police and enter homes without a search warrant.
The conservative leader blames some of the violence on neighboring Colombia, accusing the country’s government of not doing enough to stop cartels operating along the two countries’ border. In January, Noboa also imposed tariffs on Colombian imports and said it would not lift them until the security situation at the border between the two countries improved.
Earlier this month, the Ecuadorian military said it conducted a joint operation with the United States targeting a training camp used by Colombian drug traffickers, including using drones, helicopters and boats to attack the site.
Officials said the camp, on the Ecuadorian side of the border, belongs to the Comandos de la Frontera, a breakaway group from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a guerrilla group that signed a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016.
Ecuador’s president has been criticized by civil society groups who say his heavy-handed approach has failed to reduce crime while putting civilians at risk.
In a case last year that raised questions about Noboa’s approach to crime, 11 soldiers were sentenced to more than 30 years in prison for kidnapping four children whose bodies were found outside a military base near Guayaquil.
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