Ecuador orders the detention of 16 soldiers charged with the disappearance of 4 children

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QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — An Ecuadorean judge Tuesday ordered the arrest of 16 soldiers charged with the disappearance of four children who went missing three weeks ago in the coastal city of Guayaquil.

A request to detain the soldiers was made by Ecuador’s Attorney General’s office. In a statement on X the law enforcement agency said its request had been granted, adding that the detained soldiers would be transferred from a military base to a prison.

The case of the missing children has shaken Ecuador, a nation where the military has been increasingly deployed to patrol cities and fight drug gangs amid growing levels of violence.

The children, aged 11 to 15, were reported missing by their parents on Dec. 8, after they went to play soccer in a working-class sector of Guayaquil and did not return home.

A video taken by a security camera shows a military patrol taking two of the children into the back of a pickup truck and driving off with them.

Ecuador’s military has admitted the children were in its custody and claimed they were arrested because they were participating in a robbery attempt.

The military says the children were released on the same night they were detained and that gangs are to blame for their disappearance.

Meanwhile, detectives last week found four charred bodies near a military base on the outskirts of Guayaquil. Investigators are trying to determine if any of those corpses, whose faces and fingerprints are not recognizable, belong to the missing children.

The case of the four missing children has led to protests in Guayaquil, and shocked a nation struggling to contain homicides, extortion and human rights abuses.

On Tuesday dozens of people gathered outside the courthouse in Guayaquil where prosecutors asked a judge to imprison the soldiers that were accused of disappearing the children.

“They were not terrorists,” some of the protesters chanted. “They were kids that loved soccer.”

Violence in Ecuador worsened in January after a gang leader escaped from prison amid deadly riots. Two days later, members of another drug gang attacked a television channel and interrupted a live broadcast to make demands to the government.

President Daniel Noboa’s government has leaned on the military to curb gang violence. However, the military has now been implicated in several abuses, including the disappearance of two children in August in the central province of Los Rios, and the case of a 19-year-old who was fatally shot by the military at a checkpoint on a road in Guayaquil.

Noboa, a Guayaquil native, is planning to run for re-election in February. The conservative politician, who belongs to one of the country’s wealthiest families, has promised to reduce violence and solve power shortages that have hurt Ecuador’s economy.

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