The President of Ecuador, William Lassodeclared this Monday in a state of emergency the city of Durán, and the coastal provinces of El Oro and Manabí, where a mayor was shot dead on Sunday.
“This state of exception will take effect immediately and the articles of the decree include a curfew from ten at night (03:00 GMT) until five in the morning (10:00 GMT),” the president told the press after leading the Security Committee in Durán.
The measure will be applied for 60 days due to a “serious internal commotion” and allows the government to mobilize the public force in joint patrols between the police and the Armed Forces.
“We cannot deny that organized crime has permeated the State, political organizations and society itself,” Lasso pointed out when lamenting the death of Augustine Intriagomayor of the fishing port of Manta, and condemn a new prison massacre in Guayaquil that left six inmates dead.
How was the mayor’s crime Augustine Intriago
Intriago was touring a municipal construction site on Sunday when a man opened fire, killing the mayor and a young athlete who was greeting him at the time.
The crime shocked Manta, where on Monday hundreds of people attended the wake of Intriago, 37 years old and father of two children. A foreigner was detained as a suspect in the armed attack.
“We are not going to allow organized crime groups to generate insecurity, violence and concern for any reason,” said Lasso, who has issued two separate states of exception to try to contain the growing violence in the country.
Durán, a neighbor of Guayaquil, is one of the most violent cities in the country, with 85 homicides registered between January and July.
Due to its strategic location in the Pacific, the province of Guayas (southwest), to which Durán and Guayaquil belong, has become a center of drug trafficking operations.
Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru – the world’s main cocaine producers – has seized 455 tons of drugs since Lasso took office in May 2021.
In 2021, the annual record for drug seizures was recorded, some 210 tons. Guayas is the province that reports the most murders in the country, with 1,531 cases between January and July.
Manabí follows in second place with 370 homicides, while El Oro is fifth with 283, according to Dinased, the police unit in charge of investigating disappearances and violent deaths.
Last year, Lasso decreed a state of emergency three times for Guayaquil and other nearby areas to deal with high crime rates.
Source: Ambito
