Ecuador’s president has given sweeping powers to the country’s army to take on the drug gangs that have plunged the nation into its most serious security crisis in modern history.
Daniel Noboa, who only took office in November, decreed yesterday that the South American nation was in a “state of internal armed conflict” — an order which lifts many of the peacetime restrictions on his deployment of the military and authorises the security services to “neutralise” the threat from the criminal gangs.
Shortly after the decree was issued, soldiers were seen close to the presidential palace in the capital Quito, with several patrols also seen on the streets in other cities. All schools were closed and the parliament’s in-person sessions were suspended. A nationwide curfew
