Ecuador’s President Guillemo Lasso on Friday highlighted the work carried out by the country’s National Police and Armed Forces following the state of emergency decree, stating that the country has dealt «a great blow» to organized crime.
During a message on national television, the Ecuadorian president detailed that after hours of recordings, intelligence work and hundreds of arrests, the country’s security forces have confronted organized crime, drug trafficking and its links to politics, as reported by ‘El Telegrafo’.
«Ecuadorians clearly rejected these attempts at politicking and we have acted with determination, because we do not want more lives of Ecuadorians under threat,» said Lasso, who has been in charge of the command post in Guayaquil, along with security authorities, after the violence unleashed in up to three provinces of the country. «Let them know that there is a government and a president willing to assume the costs to dismantle the terrorists, the violent, the drug gangs,» he added.
However, the president of Ecuador called on the population to «be united» to defeat criminal gangs throughout the country, supporting the police and military in this task.
On November 1, Guillermo Lasso decreed a state of emergency in the provinces of Guayas and Esmeraldas, allowing him to decree a curfew and request the help of the army in joint operations with the National Police.
Ecuador has been for several days the scene of a series of violent acts in the provinces of Guayas and Esmeraldas, both in the north, which have resulted in the death of at least five policemen and for which more than 50 suspects have already been arrested.
