The military actions undertaken in Ecuador in the midst of the “internal armed conflict” declared by the president, Daniel Noboa, have affected the country’s criminal groups by approximately 1.2 billion dollars, the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces reported this Monday. Jaime Vela.
Armed Forces: Criminal gangs have lost USD 1.2 billion due to military operations in Ecuador
Posted On 25 Jun 2024
Operation of the Armed Forces of Ecuador in Quito.
In a press conference, Vela indicated that in the around 159,000 operations carried out, up to last Sunday, around 23,000 soldiers have participated and 2,416 lethal weapons, almost 200,000 ammunitions, around 57 tons of drugs have been seized and almost a million dollars, nearly 51,000 explosives and 57 backhoes.
In addition, they have destroyed 15 illegal border crossings and 28 clandestine runways for small planes.
“A value of damage to terrorist groups close to 1.2 billion dollars,” summarized the general.
Since the beginning of the year, Noboa elevated the fight against organized crime to the category of “internal armed conflict”, with which he began to classify criminal gangs as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors.
Organized crime gangs, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking, are blamed for the wave of violence that is hitting Ecuador and which has led it to be among the first countries in Latin America with the most homicides, with a rate of about 47 per 100,000 inhabitants. in 2023, according to the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory (OECO) . EFE (I)
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