By Alexandra Valencia
QUITO (Reuters) -Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa escaped injury after his convoy was attacked by protesters in a rural town on Tuesday, in what the government is labeling an assassination attempt, highlighting the country’s growing political tensions.
Videos show protesters pelting the convoy with rocks, cracking windows as the vehicles sped by. The government said five people were detained after the incident and that Noboa’s car had evidence of “bullet damage”.
“The level of aggression that the caravan was attacked with shows that this was a clear assassination attempt and act of terrorism against the president,” Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo said on local television on Wednesday morning.
“Clearly we have (protest) leaders turning up the heat on the street, who are calling for the takeover of cities.”
Noboa, a banana mogul turned politician who was reelected in April, has pledged to tackle the country’s spiraling crime rate while implementing austerity measures to improve the state’s finances.
His government has frequently used emergency powers, including deploying the military to the streets, to tackle the country’s exploding crime rate.
Protests erupted in Ecuador in mid-September after Noboa ended diesel subsidies and they have continued to spread, leading him to declare a 60-day state of emergency in 10 of the country’s 24 provinces on Sunday.
Noboa has said the $1.1 billion from subsidies will be redirected to social programs. He was touring rural regions on Tuesday to inaugurate infrastructure projects in impoverished areas.
The national Indigenous federation CONAIE, which launched a strike 17 days ago, blamed the government for violence breaking out in El Tambo, where Noboa’s caravan was attacked. It said elderly women were among those attacked in a “brutal police and military action” before the visit.
CONAIE said the five people who were arrested were “arbitrarily detained” and posted a video on X of a woman in traditional dress being marched off by four police officers.
The five people who were arrested are expected to appear at a hearing on Wednesday, and the government said they would conduct a forensic analysis on Noboa’s vehicle to determine whether it was fired upon.
ECUADOR’S DEEPENING CRISIS
In July, Ecuador reported a 40% rise in homicides from a year before, with over 5,000 people killed in a country of about 18 million.
Previous attempts by governments to scrap fuel subsidies have sparked protests and the current round of unrest has already left one person dead and several injured.
In late September, 17 soldiers were detained by Indigenous groups and one protester died in the province of Imbabura, where the protests began and where the government claims Noboa’s convoy was attacked in a separate incident.
In an interview with local television on Wednesday, Interior Minister John Reimberg said the ministry was also opening an investigation to determine if the necessary security measures were taken to protect Noboa.
Speaking to reporters later in the day, Reimberg said the government would seek to detain more people involved in Tuesday’s attack.
“We have five people detained, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones,” Reimberg said, adding that they have videos to identify other suspects.
“The world was a witness to what happened yesterday,” he said. “They’re responsible for the chaos and violent acts.”
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Sarah Morland and Alexander Villegas; Editing by Christian Plumb, Bill Berkrot and Lincoln Feast)
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