Ecuador’s presidential candidate Daniel Noboa denounced this Thursday that he was unharmed from a shooting attacka week after the murder of another aspirant to power, although the authorities question his version.
“They just attacked the caravan in which we were moving in Durán, thank God we came out unharmed,” the right-winger wrote on the X social network, formerly called Twitter.
The police and the Minister of the Interior, Juan ZapataThey contradicted that version. Videos circulate on social networks of an alleged shooting in Durán, a neighbor of the port of Guayaquil, where Noboa was carrying out his campaign closing ceremony ahead of Sunday’s elections.
“After carrying out the respective verifications in the territory, the attack is ruled out,” the police reported in X, without giving more details or specifying if there was an exchange of shots.
Zapata, also in X, ruled out “an armed attack on the candidate” and added that police personnel “are deployed in the area.”
Noboa added that he will continue with his political work in Guayaquil. “Intimidation and fear have no place in the country we love and for which we are committed to change once and for all.”
A member of the campaign team told AFP that “when the caravan was passing, the bullets started.”
The presidential campaign of Ecuador lives tense moments after the assassination of the centrist candidate Fernando Villavicencio, On August 9. When he was leaving a political rally, a Colombian hit man shot him.
Most of the seven presidential candidates have been wearing bulletproof vests since that day. On Sunday, during the only official debate, Noboa appeared wearing such protection.
Durán is one of the main centers of operations for drug traffickers who send cocaine from the Pacific outposts. The son of an Ecuadorian magnate, Noboa appears in the last positions of the polls.
The intention to vote is led by the correísta Luisa González, the rightist Jan Topic and the indigenous leader Yaku Pérez.
Before his death, Villavicencio was second in the Cedatos firm polls.
In 2022 the country set the record of 26 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022 and analysts estimate that it could climb to 40 this year.
