A prosecutor investigating the dramatic live-broadcast armed assault last week on an Ecuadoran television station was shot dead Wednesday, January 17, the country's attorney general said. "In the face of the murder of our colleague Cesar Suarez... I am going to be emphatic: organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to Ecuadoran society," said Attorney General Diana Salazar in a statement on X.
Local media broadcast images of Suarez's truck with bullet holes through the driver's window on a street in the port city of Guayaquil, the nerve center of Ecuador's war against narco gangs. The murder comes amid a surge in violence in the once-peaceful South American country, which has become a hub for the global export of cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru.
The government last week declared war on powerful drug gangs, who in turn threatened to execute civilians and security forces and carried out a wave of attacks that have left about 20 people dead.
Last Tuesday, hooded gunmen burst into a TV studio, firing shots and forcing terrified staff to the ground in an incident broadcast live for about 30 minutes until police arrived on set. Thirteen assailants were arrested, many of them teenagers. A prosecution source told AFP Suarez had been in charge of determining which criminal group was behind that attack.