Hitmen gunned down an Ecuadoran air force colonel Friday in a city hard hit by drug crime that has turned the once-peaceful South American country into one of the most violent, authorities said.
Police said Colonel Porfirio Cedeño, who led an air force special operations unit, was the passenger in a van taking him to a military ceremony.
More than 20 shots were fired and the driver was hit in the leg in the attack in the city of Guayaquil, said police official Santiago Tuston.
Cedeño was traveling from Guayaquil to the city of Manta about three hours away. Both cities have been caught up in fighting between rival drug gangs which has seen homicide rates in Ecuador soar.
The van ended up stalled in the middle of the road with broken windows and riddled with bullet holes, AFP observed.
ENRIQUE ORTIZ/AFP via Getty Images
Police recovered more than 20 bullet casings at the scene. Investigators believe the gunmen were also traveling by car.
In a message on social media, ex-president Rafael Correa paid homage to his “dear friend” Cedeño, who had served as a member of his security team.
Ecuador is home to an estimated 20 criminal gangs employed in trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, sowing terror in the country of 18 million squeezed between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.
Last month, the military said a leader of one of Ecuador’s biggest crime syndicates, Los Lobos, was arrested at his home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. The U.S. last year declared Los Lobos to be the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador, which has gone from being one of South America’s most stable nations to among its most violent in just a few years due to a surge in narcotics operations.
In recent years, the South American nation has been plunged into violence by the rapid spread of transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.
In 2023, the country registered a record 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict” after a brutal wave of violence, sparked by the jailbreak of a powerful crime boss.
The move came after gunmen stormed and opened fire in a TV studio and bandits threatened random executions of civilians and security forces. A prosecutor investigating the assault was later shot dead.
