This new cocaine series by the Guardian is superb.
Asign on the doorway said “For rent” and the house’s lights were out. But the assault team were convinced a group of armed gang members lurked inside and they were determined to smoke them out. As darkness enveloped Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, six truckloads of military and police troopers screeched to a halt in front of the seemingly vacant home.
Some pummelled its front and side entrances with steel battering rams, crowbars and fists. Others scrambled up its outer wall.
Soon their hunch was confirmed. One suspect leapt from a second-floor window and ran across a corrugated roof. As the security forces finally stormed the house, a second man was wrestled to the ground inside a bedroom.
A third suspect was bundled to the living-room floor as the masked squad demolished the house’s interior in search of hidden guns and drugs. “Where’s the rifle?” one soldier bellowed as a half-naked prisoner was thrashed with a pole, leaving red streaks across his back.
Read more at
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2024/jun/12/the-cocaine-superhighway-how-death-and-destruction-mark-drugs-path-from-south-america-to-europe
Also in the series
‘We’re seeing firearms, arson, attacks on homes’: the families in the eye of Ireland’s cocaine storm
How big is Europe’s cocaine problem – and what is the human cost?
