QUITO.- The police of Ecuador arrested 68 alleged members of a criminal group that tried to take control of a hospital in a town in Guayas (southwest), at a time when the country is waging a war against drug trafficking with thousands of soldiers deployed.
“We neutralized suspected terrorists who were trying to take over the facilities of a health home in Yaguachi, Guayas,” he said. the police on social network X.
The access of these people was given “with the purpose of protecting a member of their organization, the same one who entered as an injured person during the early hours of the morning,” the authority added.
The heavy hand of the Ecuadorian government
Twenty organizations sow terror in Ecuador and impose their power from prisons, in retaliation for the government’s firm-handed policies to confront the onslaught of drug trafficking.
The spectacular takeover by armed men of the TC channel in full broadcast on January 9 shocked the country and led President Noboa to declare an “internal armed conflict” and order a relentless fight against drug gangs whom he described as “terrorists.” “.
The police added this Sunday that during the police operation firearms and drugs were also seized. A clandestine rehabilitation center “where” the alleged members of the gang were hiding was also raided, the entity said.
“Within this supposed rehabilitation center, it has been the command center for all these people,” local police chief Julio Camacho told the press, who reported that “a brothel” also operated in those facilities.
Hundreds of clandestine rehabilitation centers, which do not have adequate conditions for patient care, have been closed by the Ecuadorian health authorities. Others have been scenes of tragedies, such as when 18 people died in 2019 after being trapped in a fire.
Several of these clandestine centers have been linked to local criminal gangs and have even been targets of armed attacks, while others have been classified as kidnapping and torture centers by human rights defense organizations.
Source: With information from AFP
