The mayor of a small mining town in Ecuador was shot dead on Wednesday, just days before a national referendum on whether to take tougher measures against crime, authorities said.
Jose Sanchez, mayor of Camilo Ponce Enriquez canton in the southern province of Azuay, “was shot and killed,” the mayor’s office wrote on Facebook.
Sanchez, 52, was exercising at night accompanied by his bodyguards when gunmen opened fire, police wrote on X.
Photo: AFP
He is the fourth Ecuadoran mayor to be assassinated in a year and the second in less than a month.
Last month, the mayor of coastal San Vicente was found shot to death along with the municipality’s communications director, Jairo Loor.
Millions of Ecuadorans cast ballots in a referendum on Sunday to decide whether to green-light stricter measures against organized crime in a country gripped by bloody gang wars.
Expressing solidarity with the family and friends of Sanchez, the Ecuadoran Ministry of the Interior wrote on X: “This tragic event reinforces our tireless commitment to combat serious criminal acts.”
Once a bastion of peace situated between major cocaine producers, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by the transnational cartels that use its ports to ship the drug to the US and Europe.
Prosecutors, journalists and police are also among the victims of organized crime linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels.
In January, Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa declared that Ecuador was in a state of “internal armed conflict” against about 20 criminal groups.
That came after a spasm of violence sparked by the prison escape of a major drug lord, who has yet to be recaptured.
Noboa imposed a state of emergency and deployed soldiers to retake control of the country’s prisons, which had become the nerve center — and battleground — for gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS