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by Santiago PIEDRA SILVA QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — The heaviest flooding to hit Ecuador in two decades has killed at least 22 people in Quito, inundating homes, swamping cars and sweeping away athletes and spectators on a sports field, officials said Tuesday. Twenty people are missing and 47 injured, Ecuador’s SNGRE emergency service said on Twitter. Video footage showed torrents of water carrying stones, mud and debris down streets in the Ecuadoran capital, as rescuers […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) – At least 11 people were killed and 32 injured on Monday after the heaviest flooding to hit Ecuador in nearly two decades triggered a massive landslide in capital Quito, authorities said. Torrents of water carrying stones and mud swept down an avenue in the Ecuadorian city, washing away cars and flooding houses and streets, according to images released by the emergency services. The torrential downpour caused a water collection structure to […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) – An oil spill in eastern Ecuador has reached a nature reserve and polluted a river that supplies water to indigenous communities, the country’s environmental ministry said Monday. Nearly two hectares (five acres) of a protected area of the Cayambe-Coca national park have been contaminated, as well as the Coca river — one of the biggest in the Ecuadoran Amazon, the ministry said in a statement. The park of some 400,000 hectares […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) – Ecuador said it was monitoring the progress of an operation to clean up an oil leak in the Amazon jungle that threatens to pollute a river. Heavy rains caused a mudslide at Piedra Fina in the eastern Napo province on Friday. A rock struck and ruptured an oil pipeline resulting in the leak of a “huge quantity” of oil, a ministry official said on Saturday. The environment ministry said on Sunday […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuador on Sunday declared a red alert in most of the country following a ten-fold increase in Covid-19 cases. The red alert applies to 193 of the South American country’s 221 cantons, including major population hubs such as Quito and Guayaquil. Schools have also been shut until January 21. Daily cases rose from an average of 4,000 in the week around Christmas to more than 42,000 in the second week of […]
PUERTO AYORA, Ecuador (AFP) – Ecuador created a massive new marine reserve Friday north of its Galapagos islands, forming a Pacific corridor up to Costa Rica’s Cocos Island National Park to preserve species of migratory fauna, such as sharks. President Guillermo Lasso, on board a scientific vessel from the Galapagos National Park (PNG) anchored in the bay of Puerto Ayora off Santa Cruz Island, signed the decree creating the new reserve called “Hermandad” (Brotherhood). To […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — A tremor measuring 4.6 hit the Ecuador capital Quito on Tuesday, rattling the city of 2.7 million people but without causing any major damage, authorities said. The epicenter of the quake was a few kilometers from the city center, at a depth of some 12 kilometers, according to the Geophysical Institute of Ecuador. Hospitals and other public buildings were evacuated, and workers rushed out of office buildings as alarms sounded, to […]
by Santiago PIEDRA SILVA GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuador is “seriously threatened” by drug trafficking mafias who want to “take control of all the country’s prisons,” President Guillermo Lasso said Monday, after the heads of the armed forces and the prison service quit following jail riots that left 68 people dead. Lasso said a “massive operation” was underway by the police and the army in the overcrowded prison in Guayaquil, where two days of fighting […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — A plane-spotting radar Ecuador started operating two weeks ago to curtail drug trafficking was hit by a non-deadly explosion Sunday, according to authorities who said a “terrorist” attack could not be ruled out. The country’s defense ministry said there were no casualties from the blast that knocked out the military radar, which had been installed in the west coast town of Montecristi. “For the moment, a possible terrorist attack cannot be […]
by Paola Lopez and Santiago Piedra Silva / Paula Lopez and Santiago Piedra Silva QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Indigenous and rural Ecuadorans blocked roads in several provinces Wednesday on the second day of protest against soaring fuel prices amid a countrywide state of emergency. On Tuesday, 37 people were arrested, and five police officers, a journalist and at least one demonstrator were injured in the largest protests since conservative President Guillermo Lasso took office in […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — An avalanche Sunday on a snow-capped Ecuadoran volcano killed at least four climbers and injured a fifth, officials reported. The avalanche struck a group of about a dozen mountaineers while at an altitude of 6,100 meters (20,000 feet) on the dormant Chimborazo volcano, Ecuador’s highest peak, in the central Andean region, the ECU911 security service said. “The existence of four dead people (and) one injury is confirmed,” the agency said, adding […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso on Monday declared a state of emergency in the country grappling with a surge in drug-related violence, and ordered the mobilization of police and military in the streets. “Starting immediately, our Armed Forces and police will be felt with force in the streets because we are decreeing a state of emergency throughout the national territory,” said the president in a speech broadcast by the state channel EcuadorTV. […]
