Ecuador’s embattled President Guillermo Lasso has declared a fourth state of emergency in the violence-hit city of Guayaquil after a deadly bomb attack killed at least five and wounded 17.
Ecuador’s Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo described Sunday’s blast as a “declaration of war on the state” of organized crime in the country’s largest city and classified it as an act of terrorism. Security forces are mobilized for a month and allowed to conduct home inspections.
Images from the scene showed ripped-off house fronts and bloodied cars with blown windows in the working class neighborhood of Cristo de Consuelo. According to the authorities, eight houses and two cars were destroyed in the early morning explosion.
The bombing marks a dramatic escalation in violent tactics by criminal gangs in Ecuador’s largest city, which has seen an exponential rise in homicides as rival gangs fight for dominance of the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe and the United States.
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Wedged between Colombia and Peru, the world’s top cocaine producers, Ecuador has seen shocking levels of violence, including decapitated bodies hanging from footbridges and six brutal prison massacres that have killed nearly 400 inmates since February 2021.
Since the decree, eleven raids have been carried out in the city and five people arrested, Carrillo told journalists on Monday.
“What worries us the most … is capacity [the gang] now have to build elements in a home-made way,” Carrillo tweeted after the explosion, referring to the explosives used in the act. “We’re studying how they acquire these abilities to commit barbaric acts.”
The incident is the deadliest so far in a dramatic spike in bombings in the country, with 145 so far this year, half of which took place in Guayaquil, according to the government.
“Criminal gangs have become a government within a government in Ecuador,” Guayaquil Mayor Cynthia Viteri wrote in one open letter posted on Twitter to Lasso, who took office as President last year.
“We have witnessed hangings on bridges, planned murders on motorcycles, rapes in malls and school buses,” she wrote. “Blackmailing of innocent shopkeepers and the deaths of more than a dozen child victims by stray bullets.”
“A president is the protector of his people, but so far we have not seen a single sure step in fighting crime,” the letter continued. “Who’s in charge here, organized crime or an enslaved government?”
On Twitter, Lasso replied that the enemy was “drug terrorism… not the government,” adding that “in countries that have had these painful experiences, the authorities act as one, not divided.” However, he has faced increasing criticism as the escalating violence shows no signs of abating.
Guayaquil was one of the The 50 Most Violent Cities in the world in 2021, according to Insight Crime, a think tank. It is the first time that an Ecuadorian city has appeared on the list.