International
Guayakill: Ecuadoran port city torn apart by gangs

| By AFP | Héctor Velasco and Karla Pesantes |
Entire neighborhoods run by gangs, prison bloodbaths and police overwhelmed by criminal firepower: Drug trafficking has transformed the Ecuadoran city of Guayaquil into a den of violence.
The port city of 2.8 million people, which on Saturday hosts the final of the Copa Libertadores competition, has witnessed scenes of incredible barbarity in recent years.
Hundreds of inmates have been killed — many beheaded or incinerated — in numerous prison battles, and civilians have increasingly gotten caught up in the gang war rocking the city rebaptized “Guayakill” by inhabitants.
So far this year, the commercial heart of Ecuador has seen 1 200 murders — 60 percent more than in 2021 according to official data.
Since last year, almost 400 inmates have died in several cities, most of them in Guayaquil, which has also been hit by a spate of car bombs and shocking scenes of bodies dangling from bridges.
And despite the government declaring states of emergency to allow for troop deployment and boosting police numbers in Guayaquil by over 1 000 to nearly 10 000, some fear it is a losing battle.
“We used to confront small arms… revolvers. But now on the streets we face American (automatic) rifles, grenades, explosive devices,” police forensics official Luis Alfonso Merino told AFP.
“The violence has grown enormously.”
Rifles, grenades
Once a relatively peaceful neighbor of major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, Ecuador was long merely part of the drug transit route.
But recently, traffickers with suspected links to Mexican cartels such as Sinaloa, the Gulf Clan and Los Zetas have been expanding their domestic presence — fighting over the fast-growing local market and access to the port of Guayaquil for exports to Europe and the United States.
The city’s prisons, where gangs also battle it out for supremacy, are emblematic of the fast-declining security situation.
In one of the deadliest riots in Latin American history, 122 people were slaughtered at the infamous Guayas 1 penitentiary in September last year in an hours-long rampage by inmates wielding guns, machetes and explosives.
“The State does not govern the prisons,” Billy Navarrete of the CDH human rights NGO told AFP.
Instead, they are under the control of “criminal organizations with the complicity of law enforcement agents who allow, tolerate and enrich themselves with arms trafficking,” he said.
The government has announced it was stepping up enforcement. In 2021, it reported a record haul of 210 tons of drugs.
So far this year, the figure stands at 160 tons.
In a 2019 report, Ecuadoran intelligence said there were at least 26 criminal gangs fighting for control of the lucrative drug market, but officials have since said the number is likely higher.
And according to operations chief Major Robinson Sanchez in Guayaquil, the gangs are “better armed than the police.”
Wolves vs Eagles
At the entrance to Socio Vivienda II, an impoverished housing development and one of the most dangerous places in Guayaquil, police and soldiers stand guard.
Two dozen others in black uniforms, bulletproof vests and balaclavas patrol the narrow streets on motorcycles.
Some 24 000 people live in Socio Vivienda’s three sectors in the crossfire of the gang war that has resulted in several public shootouts since 2019 and forced school closures in recent weeks.
The gangs go by names such as Lobos (Wolves) and Tiguerones. The Aguilas (Eagles) are based higher up on the hill.
When the groups first started going head to head, the community itself erected metal gates at the ends of streets to prevent gang members from moving freely about.
But police removed these for ease of access, and now “the bullets zoom from one end to the other,” said a community leader, 45, who spoke on condition of anonymity in an atmosphere of fear.
‘Zombies’ and sentinels
Patrolling officers stop at a house in Socio Vivienda and enter by force.
They find no drugs, only three youngsters with “Tigueron” tattooed onto their arms. It is not enough to detain them.
The gangs use children as young as 10 as sentinels or informants, residents and police say.
As they “rise” in the organization, they earn the right to get tattooed — but not without having committed a crime.
On the streets, it is common to see doped-up consumers of “H” — a heroin residue sold for 25 cents per gram. They are known locally as “zombies.”
The community leader told AFP that luxury vehicles moved in and out freely, transporting drugs right under the noses of police.
And as fearful families leave the neighborhood, gang members immediately “move in” to their homes, he added.
So far this year in Socio Vivienda II alone, records show 252 killings, up from 66 in 2021.
On the weekend preceding Saturday’s Libertadores clash between Brazilian teams Flamengo and Athletico Paranaense, 21 murders were reported in Guayaquil.
Some 50 000 foreign fans are expected to turn out for Saturday’s final.
International
Trump will receive Netanyahu at the White House next week

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Washington next week, a high-ranking official of Donald Trump’s government told EFE.
The visit, which according to the specialized portal Jewish Insider will take place on Monday, comes amid pressure from Washington to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza strip.
The US president launched a message on Sunday on his social network Truth calling for an immediate agreement to end the conflict and “release the hostages.”
This message follows another one from last Friday in which he assured that a solution to the conflict in Palestine could be reached as early as this week.
“We are working in Gaza and trying to solve it. We are supplying a lot of money and a lot of food to that area because we have to do it,” the president stressed at an event in Washington.
In addition to publicly insisting on his desire to reach a cease of hostilities in the region, Trump has also supported Netanyahu, a key ally, despite the fact that the Israeli is going through a judicial process where he is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three different criminal cases.
Israel has maintained its offensive in Gaza, in a resurgence of the conflict that has already lasted for more than a year and that leaves dozens of deaths daily.
The Israeli Army has intensified its attacks in the north of the Strip after ordering last Sunday the forced evacuation of residents in several neighborhoods of the capital of Gaza and the northern city of Yabalia.
Since October 7, 2023, at least 56,259 Palestinians have died and more than 132,000 have been injured by Israeli fire, according to figures from the Ministry of Health of the Hamas Government.
International
The US climate agency will lose access to key data for hurricane forecasting in July

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on Monday that it will lose access to essential satellite data for the hurricane forecast on July 31, when the Department of Defense will stop sharing the images with that US agency.
Initially, NOAA was going to lose access to the data from today Monday, but managed to extend the deadline since NASA, which was also going to be affected by the measure, requested an extension until July 31.
According to a NOAA statement, late on Friday, June 27, the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command received a request from Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, “to postpone the withdrawal and continue processing and distributing data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program until July 31.”
The original decision to cut off access to satellite data as of today was made with the aim of “mitigating a significant cybersecurity risk,” according to the note.
NOAA’s access to data provided by the Defense Weather Satellite Program was crucial for predicting hurricane formation, since they allowed to mediate variables that were not available to conventional satellites.
In addition, the measure takes place in the middle of hurricane season, which experts expect to be more intense than normal in the Atlantic Ocean.
According to the Colorado State University (CSU), the probability of a major hurricane, category 3 or higher, impacting the United States in the current Atlantic cyclone season amounts to 51%.
This coincides with the approval in the Lower House of Congress of the controversial “great and beautiful bill” of US President Donald Trump, which includes a cut of almost 30% of the annual budget to NOAA and 646 million dollars to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
International
The Argentine justice declares Milei’s measure that limited the right to strike unconstitutional

The Justice of Argentina declared on Monday the unconstitutionality of two articles of the decree signed on May 20 by President Javier Milei that limited the right to strike of workers from various sectors, giving rise to a precautionary measure requested by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the main workers’ central of the country.
The decision was made by the National Labor Court No. 3, which ordered to stop the application of articles 2 and 3 of decree 340/2025, considering that they violate constitutional guarantees such as freedom of association and the right to strike, established in the Constitution and in international agreements signed by Argentina.
The decree modified article 24 of Law 25,877, which regulates collective labor conflicts, and declared a long list of activities as essential, limiting the possibility of its workers to carry out union action measures.
Judge Moira Fullana, who intervened in the case, argued that the unconstitutionality is based on the fact that, at the time of the signing of the decree, the National Congress was in full function, so there was no justification of necessity and urgency that deserved to skip the legislative treatment of such modifications.
On June 2, Fullana had provisionally failed to suspend the application of this measure, in response to another precautionary measure, requested by the Association of State Workers (ATE).
Until before its recent challenge, Decree 340/2025 required to guarantee between 50% and 75% of the usual benefits in sectors such as the production of medicines and/or hospital supplies, land and underground transport, radio and television, industrial activities, the food industry, the production and distribution of building materials, all airport services, logistics services, mining activity, refrigeration activity, mail and the distribution and marketing of food and beverages, among others, even during trade union conflicts.
The Government also included in that list of essential services all branches of maritime and river transport, customs, immigration services and education at all levels.
The measure, originally included in an extensive decree of general deregulation of the economy signed by Milei shortly after its assumption in December 2023, had already been unconstitutional by the Argentine Justice at that time.
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