A shooting without victims was registered this Thursday during one of the closing acts of the campaign of the candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador Daniel Noboa, according to EFE sources from his presidential campaign, who described it as an “attack”, while the Government ruled out that it was an attack against the businessman and former assemblyman.

The incident occurred during a caravan journey that the candidate, protected with a bulletproof vest, was taking in Durán, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Guayaquil known for being one of the areas with the highest crime rate in Ecuador, and designated by the authorities as a zone that drug traffickers use to collect cocaine that is then taken to the port.

Although the members who accompanied him denounced at first that it was an attack against the candidate, the Minister of the Interior of Ecuador, Juan Zapata, ruled out that it was an armed attack against Noboa.

Zapata indicated that there are personnel from the Ecuadorian National Police deployed in the area, from which the caravan quickly left the place to bring Noboa to safety, as can be seen in some videos of the participants published on social networks.

According to local media, it could have been a confrontation between local gangs. However, Noboa later insisted on Twitter that it was an attack on his caravan. “They have just attacked the caravan in which we were moving in Durán. Thank God, we came out unharmed,” wrote the candidate for the Presidency.

“Intimidation and fear have no place in the country we love and for which we are committed to change once and for all. We will continue the closing caravan in Guayaquil, taking care of ourselves but with a lot of faith, optimism and determination.. Thank you for your messages and encourage us to continue,” added Noboa.

Eight days after the assassination of Villavicencio

The event occurred eight days after the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated, riddled with bullets by alleged Colombian hitmen on August 9 as he left a rally he held at a school campus in the northern Quito business case.

Days before, Villavicencio had denounced death threats received against him, allegedly coming from Adolfo Macías ‘Fito’, the boss of Los Choneros, one of the criminal gangs in Ecuador dedicated to organized crime and drug trafficking that the candidate had promised to combat.

Noboa also denounced last Sunday having received death threats, in statements offered upon entering the presidential debate, which he attended with strong security measures and a bulletproof vest that he did not remove during the entire meeting with the other candidates.

The candidate is one of the eight who choose to succeed the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, and complete the 2021-2025 period, interrupted in May, when the president invoked the constitutional mechanism of “cross death” to dissolve the National Assembly (Parliament), dominated by the opposition, at the time it was preparing to vote on his dismissal.