QUITO, April 4 (NNN-XINHUA) — One suspect was killed and seven others were arrested during clashes between Ecuadorian troops and armed groups in the country’s Amazon region, the armed forces said Wednesday.
The clashes took place in the Amazonian province of Orellana, in the northeast of the country, during a military operation against illegal mining, the military said.
According to army intelligence, those arrested participated in attacks on military personnel on March 22 in the Barranca Bermeja district of the northern Amazonian province of Sucumbios, which left one soldier dead and four others wounded by gunshot.
The attacks occurred while the military was carrying out surveillance activities as part of a “state of emergency” in force since January to combat crime and “severe internal unrest.”
Meanwhile, at least 14 civil servants in Ecuador, including judges and police officers, were arrested on Wednesday in a nationwide operation against corruption within the legal system, the country’s Attorney General’s Office said.
Police arrested and raided homes in eight provinces as part of Operation Plague, which targeted civil servants suspected of systematically allowing criminals to elude justice in exchange for “money or favors.”
“Those allegedly involved … benefited highly dangerous people, granting them freedom through legal tricks and abuse of the law,” the office said in a post on social media site X, formerly Twitter.
Judges implicated let criminals already in prison “obtain their freedom illegitimately though it appeared legal,” said the office.
The operation aims “to eradicate this plague that operates in the justice system, which has been systematized as a vicious circle and which accounts, once again, for the deep emergence of corruption in state institutions,” it added. — NNN-AGENCIES
