Ecuadorian Diana Carnero, councilor of the coastal municipality of Naranjal, was shot dead this Wednesday, at a time when the country is subject to a state of emergency and an “internal armed conflict” declared against organized crime, which empowers military support the Police in internal security actions.
The councilor, 29 years old, She was shot by hitmen in the middle of a public street in the Corona 2 sector, in Naranjala municipality in the coastal province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil.
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According to Vistazo magazine, the councilor from the Citizen Revolution movement, led by the former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), She died in a health center in Naranjal, where she was transferred after the attack. but he could not resist the severity of the injuries.
On her side, the president of the Citizen Revolution, the former presidential candidate Luisa González, He lamented the murder of Cantero on his social network account X.
“I just found out that today our colleague Diana Carnero, councilor of Naranjal, was murdered. A heartfelt hug to her family,” González commented.
Also the singer-songwriter Marisol Bowen, Cantero co-religionist, expressed her regret and lamented that the crime had occurred “in the midst of a state of exception.”
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In a message on his X network account, he asked the country’s president, Daniel Noboa: “Where is the security and the fight against crime? Where is your government?”
Human rights activist Jhajaira Urresta also expressed her “deep pain” over Cantero’s death and said that “the State must respond for everyone’s safety.” “The authorities should be outraged by these crimes and provide true protection,” she added.
Cantero’s murder joins a long list of authorities who have been victims of hitmen in recent months in Ecuador, including prosecutors, judges and politicians such as the mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriagoor the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
President Daniel Noboa At the beginning of January, he declared a state of emergency and decreed a situation of internal armed conflict to try to stop a spiral of violence in prisons and on the streets nationwide, attributed to organized crime groups.
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By declaring the “internal armed conflict,” the Government identified at least 22 transnational organized crime groups and classified them “as terrorist organizations” and “belligerent non-state actors.”
The spiral of violence was unleashed just after President Noboa announced his decision to launch his ‘Phoenix Plan’, with the aim of regaining control of the prisons, many of them internally dominated by groups of criminals, whose rivalries have left more than 450 prisoners murdered since 2020 in a series of prison massacres.
This violence also moved to the streets until Ecuador became one of the most violent countries, with 45 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.
