Air power colonel shot lifeless by hitmen whereas driving to navy ceremony in Ecuador

Hitmen gunned down an Ecuadoran air power colonel Friday in a metropolis exhausting hit by drug crime that has turned the once-peaceful South American nation into one of the crucial violent, authorities stated.

Police stated Colonel Porfirio Cedeño, who led an air power particular operations unit, was the passenger in a van taking him to a navy ceremony.

Greater than 20 pictures have been fired and the driving force was hit within the leg within the assault within the metropolis of Guayaquil, stated police official Santiago Tuston.

Cedeño was touring from Guayaquil to the town of Manta about three hours away. Each cities have been caught up in combating between rival drug gangs which has seen murder charges in Ecuador soar.

The van ended up stalled in the midst of the street with damaged home windows and riddled with bullet holes, AFP noticed.

Police recovered greater than 20 bullet casings on the scene. Investigators imagine the gunmen have been additionally touring by automobile.

In a message on social media, ex-president Rafael Correa paid homage to his “pricey good friend” Cedeño, who had served as a member of his safety staff.

Ecuador is dwelling to an estimated 20 prison gangs employed in trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, sowing terror within the nation of 18 million squeezed between the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.

Final month, the navy stated a chief of one among Ecuador’s largest crime syndicates, Los Lobos, was arrested at his dwelling within the coastal metropolis of Portoviejo. The U.S. final 12 months declared Los Lobos to be the most important drug trafficking group in Ecuador, which has gone from being one among South America’s most secure nations to amongst its most violent in only a few years because of a surge in narcotics operations.

Lately, the South American nation has been plunged into violence by the speedy unfold of transnational cartels that use its ports to ship medication to the US and Europe.

In 2023, the nation registered a file 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “inside armed battle” after a brutal wave of violence, sparked by the jailbreak of a robust crime boss.

The transfer got here after gunmen stormed and opened fireplace in a TV studio and bandits threatened random executions of civilians and safety forces. A prosecutor investigating the assault was later shot lifeless.