Ecuadorian officials said the government is deploying 75,000 soldiers and police officers to four crime-ridden provinces and imposing a nightly curfew aimed at tightening control as drug violence persists.
The curfew bans people from leaving their homes from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., officials said. It began Sunday night in Guayas, El Oro, Los Rios and Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas, and authorities said 253 people were arrested for breaking the curfew.
Officials said the curfew is expected to last two weeks. The orders cover Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populous city, but do not extend to Quito or the touristic Galápagos Islands.
Interior Minister John Reimberg said Monday that Ecuadorian troops used authorized artillery to destroy three identified targets, though he provided no specific details about the nature of the strikes. Reimberg told journalists: “Let whatever must fall, fall — and whoever must fall, fall,” and said the operations resulted in no recorded casualties.
The measures come as Ecuador struggles to contain drug violence involving rival cartels competing for control of coastal ports used to smuggle cocaine to the United States. The government has linked the violence to competition over trafficking routes and partnerships between cartels and local gangs.
The Ministry of the Interior said last year Ecuador recorded its highest homicide rate in decades, at 50 murders per every 100,000 residents. The AP report also said the homicide rate has quintupled since the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Daniel Noboa has taken additional steps that expand the military’s role, including extending a state of exception that allows troops to conduct joint patrols with police and enter homes without a search warrant. The conservative leader has blamed some of the violence on neighboring Colombia, accusing its government of not doing enough to stop cartels operating along their shared border.
In January, Noboa imposed tariffs on Colombian imports and said they would not be lifted until the security situation along the border improves. Earlier this month, Ecuador’s military said it carried out a joint operation with the United States against a training camp used by Colombian drug traffickers, including attacking the site with drones, helicopters and boats.
Officials said the camp was located on Ecuador’s side of the border and belonged to Comandos de la Frontera, a group that split off from the FARC, the guerrilla organization that signed a peace deal with Colombia’s government in 2016.
Civil society groups have criticized Noboa’s approach, saying his methods have failed to reduce crime and have put civilians in danger. The AP report cited a case last year in which eleven soldiers were sentenced to more than 30 years in prison over the abduction of four children, whose bodies were found outside a military base near Guayaquil.