Crime in Ecuador has raised the tone of their threats against the state. This weekend, a bomb in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Guayaquil left five dead, 17 injured and several houses destroyed. The attack adds to the wave of escalating violence that has shattered the peace of citizens for the past two years. Six months ago, two bodies turned up on a bridge while the death toll has only increased.
The government’s first response to the early morning attack on Cristo del Consuelo, a neighborhood in the Guayaquil suburb, was to declare a state of emergency across the city. This is the third time in the last year. It was a “terrorist act,” said government minister Francisco Jiménez on Sunday morning in response. Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo described it as a “declaration of war on the state”. The measure, which will remain in place for the next 30 days, forces the government to reinstate a state of emergency in the city to mobilize a joint police-army task force.
In the first half of the year, Ecuador has already recorded 2,116 violent deaths, while in all of 2021 there were 2,496 registered homicides. In the province of Guayas, to which Guayaquil belongs, the homicide rate has almost doubled compared to the previous year. “Anyone who wants to wreak havoc in the city through terrorist attacks will be punished,” said the new Public Security Minister, Diego Ordonez, who was appointed earlier this month, at the same press conference. Despite the announcement, the decree, which must collect the details of the restrictions, has not been released at the time this article was published late Sunday.
Of the five people who died in the blast in a low-income neighborhood south of the city, three died instantly and two were hospitalized with injuries. The interior minister assured that home-made explosives containing “highly deadly” chemicals were used, which also contained shrapnel and metallic elements to enhance the effect. The shock wave reached 50 or 70 meters, according to Carrillo, leaving a mark five feet and 40 centimeters deep.
The first testimonies assure that people on a motorcycle appeared in the area of the attack at dawn and, after several shots, threw a sack that later exploded, leaving the so-called Calle 8 with a scene of rubble, fallen cables and dust. The official investigation shows that the attack was directed at two people linked to the Los Tiguerones criminal organization and linked to drug trafficking in Ecuador: alias Cucaracha, a resident of this neighborhood, and alias Junior.
However, the interior minister has complained that the majority of the wounded who have been treated at the health center and have already been discharged preferred to remain silent and not say what happened. “After 10 hours of the event and six hours after the $10,000 reward was announced, we haven’t found a single call,” the head of security portfolio also admitted. His ministry still lacks formal autonomy and resources, although President Guillermo Lasso decided last March to separate the Interior Ministry’s functions from those of the Government Ministry in order to strengthen the national security strategy, especially amid a political crisis and uncertainty due to recurring disputes in prisons.
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It’s not the first bomb attack in Ecuador in recent years that has seen attacks on police barracks or military commandos, but it is the first threat of this magnitude against residential areas. “What we are witnessing is not a problem caused by this government. We’ve seen it growing for a long time,” Carrillo said, citing the growing number of homicides in the country which the government attributes to gang struggles for territory and a backlash against the state for its fight against crime. Drug trafficking Three tons of drugs were seized at the same time as the attack this weekend.
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