Ecuador deploys 75,000 soldiers to crime-ridden provinces under newly imposed nightly curfew

By Gonzalo Solano

Ecuadorian officials said Monday that they have deployed 75,000 soldiers and police officers to four crime-ridden provinces where the government is implementing a nightly curfew banning people from leaving their homes from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Soldiers guard the Port of Manta, as part of heightened security in the area, in Manta.

Officials said that 253 people were arrested for breaking the curfew, which started Sunday night in Guayas, El Oro, Los Rios and Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas. The curfew is expected to last two weeks. While the orders cover Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populous city, they do not extend to Quito or the touristic Galápagos Islands.

The deployment conincides with an agreement with the United States to purse narco-criminals and cocaine shipments from Colombia.

Interior Minister John Reimberg said Monday that Ecuadorian troops used authorized artillery to destroy three identified targets, though he provided no specific details regarding the nature of the strikes. “Let whatever must fall, fall — and whoever must fall, fall,” he told journalists, noting that the operations resulted in no recorded casualties.

Ecuador is struggling to contain drug violence as rival cartels battle for control of coastal ports used to smuggle cocaine to the United States.

Last year, Ecuador recorded its highest homicide rate in decades of 50 murders per every 100,000 residents, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
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Credit: Associated Press