Ecuador and Colombia will seek joint operations against drug trafficking on the border

The presidents of Ecuador and Colombia, Guillermo Lasso and Gustavo Petro, were in favor of carrying out joint operations against criminal groups and drug trafficking in the border regions shared by both countries.

In response to the call from President Petro on Wednesday morning, when he stated that he will seek “the support of the President of Ecuador to carry out joint operations on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border against the mafias that use the border as a drug trafficking route,” the Ecuadorian president had a positive answer.

Through the same channel, Twitter, President Lasso responded: “President Petro, count on our active help. In our country we fight against drug trafficking, drug politics and organized crime vigorously. Count on the collaboration you need for that purpose”.

The messages are given just the day the State of Exception ends in the provinces of Esmeraldas, Guayas and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, which has been applied since November due to the wave of violence unleashed by drug mafias in Ecuador, along with operations of the authorities also within prisons.

In addition, on the night of Tuesday, December 13, a new massacre was registered in Colombia, in Orito, department of Putumayo, which shares part of the border with Ecuador. Five people were killed there in an armed attack on a house in the La Esperanza neighborhood. In November, in this department, a confrontation between FARC dissidents left 18 people dead and a security crisis in the region.

COLOMBIA WORKS ON STRATEGY WITH BORDER COUNTRIES

At the end of November, the Colombian Interior Minister, Alfonso Padra, announced that the government was in contact with the countries with which they share border areas, to advance a strategy that seeks to attack organized crime.

“We have established contact with the countries on the border because we noticed an activity that we are going to combat with our forces, but also with the international collaboration of Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and Panama,” he said on November 28.

The joint work, according to Padra, is being coordinated with the defense ministers and the commanders of the Armed Forces of each country, to address security problems with neighboring countries.

With information from Bloomberg Línea