Soldiers enter the jail in Cotopaxi, Ecuador, on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. Soldiers and police intervened in a number of prisons in Ecuador in quest of weapons, ammunition and explosives and to revive order.

Dolores Ochoa/AP

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Dolores Ochoa/AP

Soldiers enter the jail in Cotopaxi, Ecuador, on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. Soldiers and police intervened in a number of prisons in Ecuador in quest of weapons, ammunition and explosives and to revive order.

Dolores Ochoa/AP

QUITO, Ecuador — A prosecutor investigating a dramatic attack on the set of a public television channel final week was shot to dying Wednesday in Guayaquil, essentially the most harmful metropolis in Ecuador.

Prosecutor César Suárez, who had carried out different high-profile investigations prior to now, was shot whereas driving a automobile, Attorney General Diana Salazar stated.

“Organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to society,” she stated in a video broadcast on X, previously Twitter.

Thirteen alleged perpetrators have been arrested within the assault at TC Television, which was broadcast dwell and led President Daniel Noboa to declare that Ecuador is in an “internal armed conflict” amid a surge of killings and different crimes tied to drug trafficking.

Suárez was additionally accountable for the Metastasis case involving an Ecuadorian drug lord who allegedly obtained favorable therapy from judges, prosecutors, cops and excessive officers.

Ecuadorian police stated they had been working to seek out these answerable for the homicide of Suárez.

Ecuador has been rocked by a collection of assaults, together with the abductions of a number of cops, within the wake of a infamous gang chief’s obvious weekend escape from jail.

José Adolfo Macías Villamar, chief of Los Choneros, one of many Ecuadorian gangs thought of answerable for a spike in automobile bombings, kidnappings and slayings, was found lacking from his jail cell the place he was serving a sentence for drug trafficking.

His disappearance earlier this month led the federal government to declare a state of emergency that concerned sending the navy into prisons, which sparked a wave of at the least 30 assaults across the South American nation, together with the assault on the tv station in Guayaquil.