Trump’s declared war on drug cartels. Thousands of miles away, Ecuador is taking action
The screams from the women and children pierce the air as the battering ram smashes through the front door of their home.
There’s shouting and all-round chaos as police officers – machine guns and pistols held out in front of them – pile inside.
Doors are kicked in, curtains ripped down, drawers are opened in bedrooms, and boxes and tables are overturned.
“There’s children here!” the women shout, as they all drop to the floor.
Officers force their way into home on a raid
We are on a drugs raid in Guayaquil in Ecuador, and the police say they have good intelligence that this is the home of a drug dealer.
I have done dozens of embeds during my career covering Latin America’s drugs gangs, and it’s always deeply upsetting to see children caught up in it.
These are homes, and these are women and children, but their rights are trumped by their circumstances – they are poor, live in a rough area, and the likelihood is that one of their family members is part of a gang.
The police coming through their door is a fact of life for them.
Police are getting additional resources to tackle drug cartels
What has changed here, though, is that the raids have increased, and will continue to.
Why? Because US President Donald Trump has launched a war against drug cartels – and is demanding that countries on his list of troublesome nations tow the line and join him, or face punishing sanctions or worse.
Ecuador doesn’t produce drugs, but it is used as a transit country by drug cartels in this region. Its ports are the gateway to sea routes north to the United States and west to Asia and the South Pacific.
It is for this reason that Ecuador is on Trump’s list. But Ecuador wants help combatting these criminal networks and has been co-operating with the US.
Trump has been sending resources and military muscle to Ecuador, and the US is planning to open a military base there.
In exchange, Ecuador’s security forces are raising their game to assure America that they are on the same page.
Stuart Ramsay in Guayaquil, Ecuador
We witnessed this effort in real time, guided through multiple raids by a police officer with the call sign “Lynx”. He’s a former special forces officer now affiliated with the drugs squad, and he is something of a phenomenon.
“The United States [is] giving us money, guns, technology, and we are so happy about that,” he told me.
“It’s very important for the war.”
You could say that Lynx is in many ways the poster boy of the Ecuadorian police – he’s extremely confident, highly rated by his superiors and adored by his team.
Among his repertoire of skills, he is an expert drone pilot.
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Stuart Ramsay meets with former special forces officer ‘Lynx’
I joined him in the car park of the police headquarters as he put up his drone and started spotting drug deals on the streets a kilometre or so away. We watched the screen on the controller as two transactions took place.
The multibillion-dollar drugs business is a vast global network, and by taking out the “small guys” as Lynx calls them, they hope to disrupt the chain higher up.
“We always grab the small guys, and they talk … give me that guy, he’s a bigger guy, and then we go, go, go,” is how Lynx describes taking out the chain.
They hope that any intelligence they can gather from the lower links will ultimately be valuable information they can pass on to the US to catch more important figures.
A suspect lies on the ground as police stand guard
Lynx briefs his boss, and then we jump in our vehicles as the police try to track down the dealers. They find them – and the drugs they were selling – the next day.
The same day, we head to a notoriously dangerous hilltop neighbourhood with Lynx and the rest of the officers. They are looking for more drugs and dealers who will talk.
They arrest one man they say is a lookout – and as they search through piles of rubbish for drugs, they find bags of cocaine.
Lynx thinks we are being watched, so he sends his drone up again, this time to see what’s happening in the streets above us.
Police are getting additional resources to tackle drug cartels
“Many people [are] up on the hill, like radars looking for us, and what we are doing, and they have an advantage because they’re higher up,” he says.
“We will take the evidence, and that guy is not the owner, he is just a lookout,” he says, pointing to the man in handcuffs on the floor.
“And then I’m going to take you next to where a big drug dealer is, a strong dealer.”
Armed officers watch on outside a home in Guayaquil
I ask Lynx if he thinks people who do drugs in London, New York, or Los Angeles – or anywhere really – think about him and his officers on the streets every single day.
“I think no, because they’re in the countries more powerful, smarter, if they really [knew] I think they would think no, it’s bad, because people are killing in poor countries for the drugs, for the drugs [they] are consuming,” he replied.
“Maybe they’ll think, oh I don’t have to do that.”
The haul of drugs, weapons, ammunition and money from the raids we joined is pretty impressive.
Bags of marijuana, kilo packets of cocaine cut for sale, alongside a kilo of pure cocaine paste. There’s also money, weapons and ammunition.
It’s something of a Latin American tradition to display the results of these raids.
Behind the table, also on display, are the alleged gang members.
Who they know is worth more than all the drugs in front of them, which is what the Americans want.
The suspect who opened fire on two National Guard soldiers just blocks from the White House is an Afghan national who worked with a CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan, according to officials.
He worked with “the US government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar” during the US-led war in the country, CIA director John Ratcliffe has said.
The suspect, who has been pictured for the first time, was wounded in an exchange of gunfire before he was arrested.
He was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Pic: Reuters
Attorney general Pam Bondi said the US government plans to bring terrorism charges against the gunman and seek a sentence of life in prison “at a minimum”.
“A lone gunman opened fire without provocation, ambush style, armed with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver,” she told reporters.
US Attorney for Washington DC Jeanine Pirro identified the two wounded Guard members as Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24.
She said they had been sworn in as National Guard members fewer than 24 hours before the shooting.
Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom. Pic: Reuters
Ms Pirro said the suspect ambushed them while they were patrolling near the White House. He shot one Guardsman who fell and then shot again before firing multiple times at the second Guardsman with the Magnum handgun.
Numerous electronic devices seized from suspect’s home
The suspect “drove his vehicle cross-country from the state of Washington with the intended target of coming to our nation’s capital,” Ms Pirro said.
The FBI searched multiple properties in Washington state and San Diego on Thursday in what officials said was a terrorism probe into the DC shooting.
Investigators seized numerous electronic devices from the suspect’s house in Washington state, including cellphones, laptops, and iPads, FBI director Kash Patel told a news conference.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Lakanwal entered the US in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program to resettle Afghans who assisted the US during the war and feared reprisals from the Taliban after the withdrawal.
An unnamed relative of the suspect has said that Lakanwal served in the Afghan army for 10 years alongside US Special Forces troops and was stationed in Kandahar for part of that time.
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The relative also said Lakanwal was working for online retail giant Amazon.com the last time they spoke several months ago, according to Sky’s US partner NBC News.
A Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity has said that Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on 23 April of this year.
Lakanwal had no known criminal history, the official said.
US President Donald Trump, who was at his resort in Florida at the time of the attack, released a prerecorded video statement late on Wednesday calling the shooting “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror”.
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Trump has called for every Afghan national who entered the US under Biden to be investigated following the shooting of two National Guard troops.
He said his administration would “re-examine” all Afghans who arrived in the US during the presidency of his predecessor, Joe Biden.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency has said it has halted processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely, “pending further review of security and vetting protocols”.
In the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the president requested an additional 500 National Guard troops to bolster the more than 2,000 already deployed in the nation’s capital.
In August, Trump ordered the National Guard to the city to combat rising crime, a move that drew objections from District of Columbia officials who argued in court that it violated local authority.
Two military personnel have been shot near the White House in Washington DC.
A suspect has been taken into custody and the area secured, police said.
The White House was placed into lockdown, while US President Donald Trump is away in Florida.
Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform to say the two National Guard members had been “critically wounded”, adding that the “animal” that shot them “is also severely wounded, but regardless, will pay a very steep price”.
Washington DC shooting latest updates
Pics: AP
Both guardsmen were shot in the head, according to Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, quoting an official and a senior official directly briefed on the investigation.
The shooting will be investigated by the FBI as a possible act of terror, two senior US law enforcement officials told NBC.
The suspect, who used a handgun in the attack, has been initially identified as an Afghan national, the officials said.
But investigators are still trying to confirm all of the individual’s details.
West Virginia’s governor initially said both victims were members of his state’s National Guard and had died from their injuries – but later posted to say there were “conflicting reports about the condition of our two Guard members”.
Patrick Morrisey had said: “These brave West Virginians lost their lives in the service of their country.”
Pic: AP
FBI director Kash Patel said two National Guard members were “brazenly attacked in a horrendous act of violence”.
At a news conference he clarified they were in a “critical condition”.
Jeff Carroll, chief of the metropolitan police department in the area, said the attack began at 2.15pm local time (7.15pm in the UK) while National Guard members were on “high visibility patrols in the area”.
He said: “A suspect came around the corner, raised his arm with a firearm and discharged it at the National Guard.
“The National Guard members were… able to – after some back and forth – able to subdue the individual and bring them into custody.”
Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser called the attack a “targeted shooting”.
Pics: AP
Social media footage showed first responders attempting CPR on one of the soldiers as they treated the other on a pavement covered in glass.
Nearby other officers could be seen restraining an individual on the ground.
Emergency personnel cordon off an area near where the National Guard soldiers were shot. Pics: AP
The scene has been cordoned off by police tape, while agents from the US Secret Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on the scene, as National Guard troops stood sentry nearby. The FBI was also on the scene, the agency’s director said.
The Joint DC Task Force confirmed it was responding to an incident in the vicinity of the White House.
The DC Police Department posted on X: “Critical Incident: MPD is on the scene of a shooting at 17th and I Street, NW. Please avoid the area.”
In an update, the force said: “The scene is secured. One suspect is in custody.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The White House is aware and actively monitoring this tragic situation.
“The president has been briefed.”
Mr Trump was at his resort in Palm Beach ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, while US vice president JD Vance was in Kentucky.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Mr Trump had asked for 500 more troops to be deployed to Washington DC after the shooting.
Flights arriving at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were temporarily halted due to its proximity to the scene of the shooting, the US Federal Aviation Administration said.
Hundreds of National Guard members have been patrolling the nation’s capital after Mr Trump issued an emergency order in August, which federalised the local police force and sent in the guard from eight states and the District of Columbia.
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