US and Ecuadorian forces have launched joint operations to combat drug trafficking, the US Southern Command said on Tuesday, but neither side gave more details.<\/p>\n
Southern Command, which encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean, said in a statement on X that the \u201cdecisive action\u201d was aimed at combating illicit drug trafficking.<\/p>\n
The Ecuador defense ministry said details of the offensive operations were classified.<\/p>\n
The announcement came a day after the South American country said Washington had joined a \u201cnew phase\u201d in its so-called \u201cwar on drugs\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ecuador\u2019s President Daniel Noboa, a close ally of Donald Trump, said Washington was among \u201cregional allies\u201d taking part in the operation against drug cartels, which use ports to smuggle cocaine to international markets.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Noboa held talks in Quito with the US Southern Command chief, Francis Donovan, and Mark Schafer, the head of US Special Operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
During the meeting, they discussed plans for information sharing and operational coordination at airports and seaports, Noboa\u2019s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
About 70% of the drugs produced by Colombia and Peru, the world\u2019s largest and second-largest cocaine producers, respectively, are shipped through neighbouring Ecuador.<\/p>\n
The drug trade has unleashed a bloody turf war that has turned one of Latin America\u2019s safest countries into one of its deadliest in the space of a few years.<\/p>\n
The US and Ecuador have boosted their security cooperation since the right-wing Noboa came to power in 2023.<\/p>\n
Noboa last year pushed for the reopening of a shuttered US military base but was shot down by Ecuadorians who voted in a November referendum against overturning a ban on foreign bases.<\/p>\n
In December, the US announced a temporary deployment of air force personnel to the former US base in the port city of Manta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US and Ecuadorian forces have launched joint operations to combat drug trafficking, the US Southern Command said on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-502892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}