Colombia condemns car bomb attack in border area with Ecuador

The explosion, recorded in the coastal province of Esmeraldas, left 28 people slightly injured.  The president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, ordered the transfer of 600 security personnel to the area of ​​the attack.

The Colombian government condemned the explosion of a crash in Ecuador, which caused 28 minor injuries, and expressed solidarity with the injured and victims of what he described as a "reprehensible act".
 "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Government of Colombia, condemns the terrorist attack perpetrated with a car bomb against the Police Station in San Lorenzo, Ecuador, at dawn on Saturday," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
 The Ecuadorian Minister of the Interior, César Navas, estimated at 28 the slight wounds after the explosion registered in the exterior of a police building, a fact to which the head of State, Lenin Moreno, referred to as a "terrorist act linked to gangs of drug traffickers "
 He explained that the car bomb explosion occurred around 1:45 am on Saturday in the coastal province of Esmeraldas, in northwest Ecuador and bordering Colombia.
 Navas also stressed that there were no fatal victims of the explosion and said they have the support of the Colombian authorities to advance the investigations and "determine the perpetrators, the alleged perpetrators of this act of terror."
 The Colombian government reiterated its willingness to collaborate with Ecuador in the fight against organized crime.
 The president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, ordered the transfer of 600 security personnel to the province of Esmeraldas, bordering Colombia, where an attack with a car bomb occurred.
 The governor decreed the state of emergency, for sixty days, in the cantons of San Lorenzo and Eloy Alfaro to reinforce the safety of its inhabitants.
 In a statement, the Secom, which does not specify to which institution belong the 600 troops that will be sent to Esmeraldas, highlights that the Government strongly condemned the explosion of the "car bomb", recorded early Saturday morning in front of a police facility, in the canton of San Lorenzo.
 He considered "this terrorist attack, implemented by gangs of drug traffickers and organized crime, does not compromise its policy of fighting this transnational scourge" in its different facets, such as drug trafficking and money laundering.
 He recalled that the state of emergency in the cantons of San Lorenzo and Eloy Alfaro establishes security zones and suspends the rights to the inviolability of domicile, transit, association and assembly.
 "Facts like these are raised by the strong and successful work that has been done in the area in the direct fight against organized crime," Interior Minister César Navas said.
 "Ecuador is a country of peace and its authorities are committed to maintaining Ecuador as a country of peace," said Navas, who recalled that in recent days more than seven and a half tons of chemical precursors have been seized (used in the preparation of drugs) almost a ton of drugs and that there are seven people detained linked to drug trafficking.
 Navas pointed out that the different state bodies work in collaboration with their counterparts in Colombia, in order to determine the causes of this "act of terror".
 He recalled that the neighboring country is in a process of internal pacification in which "residual" groups subsist that have chosen not to follow that path and "are forming criminal bands that are dedicated to drug trafficking."
 He stressed that the presence of the Ecuadorian State in the border area, now affected, "would have generated reprisals or attempts of intimidation on the part of these groups," Secom reported.