The violence in Ecuador shows no sign of abating where, ten days after the introduction of the state of emergency and the declaration of internal armed conflict, the narcos have allowed themselves the luxury of successfully setting a trap for one of the most prominent prosecutors of the moment , César Suárez, killing him while he was traveling by car in Guayaquil.
The magistrate was in the forefront of all the local media, having received the delicate task of carrying out investigations into the spectacular attack, days ago, by an armed commando in the headquarters of the TC Television channel in the Ecuadorian industrial city, while a live broadcast was in progress .
According to a relative, Suárez lost his life after falling into a trap set for him by someone who induced him to leave the house to reach an area where he was supposed to receive useful information for his work.
Instead, while he was traveling by car after leaving the headquarters of the judicial police, he was intercepted on an avenue north of Guayaquil by hitmen in a fake taxi who left him no escape, firing at least 18 shots from weapons of various caliber .
Responding to this latest criminal challenge, and in the belief that the instigators of the prosecutor's murder could be there, a thousand men from the police and army broke into the regional prison of Guayaquil for the fourth time in a few days, the largest in the country, arresting two prisoners, accused of complicity.
Then in a press conference, security force leaders revealed two other major arrests of members of 'Los Chone Killer', one of 22 criminal gangs reviewed by President Daniel Noboa's government.
Without going into details, the commander of Police Zone 8, General Víctor Herrera, indicated that they were two alleged occupants of the fake taxi from which the shots were fired at the magistrate.
However, the tug of war between institutions and crime seems likely to last for a long time, despite the fact that so far 1,753 people have been arrested as part of the government's Fenix security plan, of which 158 accused of links to groups linked to terrorism.
Once an exemplary oasis of peace in Latin America, Ecuador has entered a spiral of violence in recent years, which the state has not been able to stem, linked to a boom in drug trafficking caused by Mexican and Colombian cartels, and by international mafias.
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