GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador: Ecuador on Friday deployed 10,000 soldiers in three coastal provinces to fight drug-trafficking gangs blamed for a surge in violence in the once-peaceful country.<\/p>\n
President Daniel Noboa\u2019s government has vowed an iron-fist approach as the South American nation hits record levels of murders and other violent crimes.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of special forces soldiers were deployed Friday to \u201creinforce security operations\u201d in the provinces of Guayas, Manabi and Los Rios, Air Force General Mario Bedoya told reporters.<\/p>\n
Planes with military personnel were also sent to Manta, the country\u2019s main fishing port.<\/p>\n
Ecuador is located between the world\u2019s two top exporters of cocaine \u2013 Colombia and Peru \u2013 and has seen a surge in violence by gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels.<\/p>\n
Killings and clashes in neighborhoods and public spaces have become commonplace, and the country closed 2025 with a rate of 52 homicides per 100,000 residents \u2013 one every hour, according to the Geneva-based Organized Crime Observatory.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrison or hell for anyone who jeopardizes security,\u201d the defense ministry said in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n
Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo has instructed the military high command to operate indefinitely out of the port city of Guayaquil, where troops are inspecting seaports strategic for drug trafficking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador: Ecuador on Friday deployed 10,000 soldiers in three coastal provinces to fight drug-trafficking gangs blamed for a surge in violence in the once-peaceful country. President Daniel Noboa\u2019s government has vowed an iron-fist approach as the South American nation hits record levels of murders and other violent crimes. Hundreds of special forces soldiers were …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92366,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92350\/revisions\/92366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}