Air force colonel shot dead by hitmen while driving to military ceremony in Ecuador

Aerial view of the site where a colonel of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces was murdered in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on February 14, 2025. 

ENRIQUE ORTIZ/AFP via Getty Images

Police recovered more than 20 bullet casings at the scene. Investigators believe the gunmen were also traveling by car.

In a message on social media, ex-president Rafael Correa paid homage to his “dear friend” Cedeño, who had served as a member of his security team.

Ecuador is home to an estimated 20 criminal gangs employed in trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, sowing terror in the country of 18 million squeezed between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.

Last month, the military said a leader of one of Ecuador’s biggest crime syndicates, Los Lobos, was arrested at his home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. The U.S. last year declared Los Lobos to be the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador, which has gone from being one of South America’s most stable nations to among its most violent in just a few years due to a surge in narcotics operations.

In recent years, the South American nation has been plunged into violence by the rapid spread of transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.

In 2023, the country registered a record 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict” after a brutal wave of violence, sparked by the jailbreak of a powerful crime boss.

The move came after gunmen stormed and opened fire in a TV studio and bandits threatened random executions of civilians and security forces. A prosecutor investigating the assault was later shot dead.

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Publish date : 2025-02-14 06:23:00

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