Inside Ecuador’s struggle to bring down the cartels
Ecuador is by no means the first Latin American country to try to take on the cartels and gangs that have embedded themselves into the societies of many countries across the region.
But Ecuador, arguably more than others, faces a real challenge because of the involvement on its soil of two of Mexico’s most notorious and powerful drugs cartels – Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation.
The authorities in Ecuador tell us that the Sinaloa cartel has broadly aligned itself with the Los Choneros gang, while Jalisco New Generation has aligned itself with Los Tiguerones.
The 36-year-old president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, ordered a crackdown on these two gangs after Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macias, the leader of Los Choneros, escaped from jail before his planned move to a high security prison.
The crackdown led to a gang fight back, with murders, car bombings and insurrection launched across the country in January.
A soldier on patrol in Esmeraldas, Ecuador
The fight back was particularly focused on the port cities and towns of the Pacific Coast, like Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, which are major areas of influence for the gangs.
President Noboa recategorised gang crime and membership as terrorism, immediately allowing the security forces to exercise much more rigorous powers to detect, confront, and incarcerate gang members.
The country’s security forces have been conducting raid after raid, rounding up people they believe are linked to the gangs.
Prisons filling up
The country’s prisons have been filling up with new inmates, and some prisons, notorious for their lack of discipline and control have been taken over by the military, completely changing the dynamic inside and the freedom of the gang leaders to continue their business activities while locked up.
The president of El Salvador, another country infested with narco crime gangs, has overseen quite an overwhelming clampdown against criminal activity, and as it stands, roughly two percent of the country’s entire population is behind bars.
Inmates in prison
The net effect has seen murder rates and general crime rates plummet, according to the government’s latest figures.
‘The world’s coolest dictator’ is how President Nayib Bukele described himself. And his popularity in El Salvador has rocketed.
Ecuador’s president appears to be following a very similar plan but is keen to distance himself from the dictatorship sobriquet.
The Phoenix Plan
Soldiers in a pick up truck patrol Guayaquil
The ‘Phoenix Plan’ to beat the gangs in Ecuador has a budget of $800 million (US) for law enforcement -$ 200 million of that comes from the government of the United States.
The United States has a vested interest in seeing gang activities in Latin America curtailed.
First to restrict the flow of illegal drugs into the country and secondly, and arguably even more importantly, to stop the flow of migrants north from South and Central America and illegally into the United States.
The huge number of migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico often tell us they are attempting the journey to escape the gangs who make life in a swathe of countries absolutely miserable.
For two weeks Sky News joined raid after raid, night and day, on land and sea, against the gangs in Ecuador. We also entered a prison, which was full, and under military guard.
So far so good.
Mexican cartels moving in
But, and it is a big but, the Mexican cartels are in town and that is a major problem. I’ve spent a lot of time with gangs and cartels in Mexico and across south and central America, some, like in Brazil, are wealthy, well-organised, ruthless, and crucially, are well-armed.
An Ecuadorian marine armed with a gun supporting the coastguard
When Brazil’s police and army go after the gangs, they conduct raids using helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles. And while the authorities have claimed major successes in recent years, my most recent visit showed me that gangs are still acting with impunity – it’s an ongoing thing.
In El Salvador, the gangs were substantial but not well organised, and in neighbouring Honduras it was very much the same picture.
However, in Mexico it’s a whole different ball game. The cartels are fundamentally part of the fabric of society, and the resources are, to all intents and purposes, limitless.
Their brutality is legendary, and their ability to buy off police, judges, whole companies, and even the government, cannot be underestimated.
Soldiers preparing to take part in a raid
Successive Mexican governments have long since given up on the police in their efforts to quell cartel activity and depend entirely on the country’s marines to carry out law enforcement.
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The point is, Mexico’s government is not winning, and if I’m honest, I don’t think they ever will as things currently stand with drug use across the world.
Now to Ecuador’s problem again. The Sinaloa and New Generation cartels realised that Ecuador – which is not a cocaine producing country – had excellent ports with speedy routes north by sea to Central and North America.
The country has a huge banana production business which exports via sea, and it’s a major oil refining country, which exports by sea. These ships are perfect for hiding and exporting drugs, particularly cocaine, as well.
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Ecuador’s cartel crackdown
Neither of the cartels will appreciate President Noboa’s disruption to their business, and my suspicion is that they won’t just walk away.
They’re used to getting their own way, and so used to problems going away – or simply killing an opponent, that they may do the same in Ecuador.
To succeed the president and his government need to keep gang members under control and in prison, they need to stop the cartels sending their operatives into the country to reboot the business, they must ensure that state institutions aren’t corrupt and bought off, and finally, the president needs to stay alive.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
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Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
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Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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