Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa on Friday announced a preemptive amnesty for security forces fighting drug cartels in the violence-wracked port of Guayaquil, where 22 people were killed in clashes between rival gangs.
Noboa, in power since 2023, is seeking another four years in office in a presidential runoff election on April 13.
He has campaigned on his crackdown on drug cartels that have turned what was once one of Latin America's most peaceful countries into one of its most violent.
On Thursday, 22 people were killed and three injured in clashes between rival factions of one of the country's biggest criminal gangs, Los Tiguerones, in Guayaquil's Nueva Prosperina neighborhood.
Writing on social network X on Friday, Noboa said that "all police and military personnel who have operated in, or who will be deployed to Nueva Prosperina already have a presidential pardon."
He argued that the security forces needed to "act with determination and without fear of reprisal."
"Defend the country and I will defend you," added the president, who edged his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez in first election round on February 9 with 44.15 percent of the vote to her 43.95 percent.
Gonzalez, a lawyer, has criticized human rights abuses allegedly committed by the security forces in the name of the war on cartels and vowed a more humane approach.
Over a dozen members of the military are being investigated over the murder of four boys who went missing while playing football in Guayaquil in December.
Their charred bodies were later found near an army base in a case that caused widespread outrage.
Ecuador has been plunged into violence by the spread of transnational cartels that use its ports, like Guayaquil, to ship cocaine to the United States and Europe.
Homicides rose from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 47 in 2023.
With the violence showing no sign of abating, Noboa's strategy on the campaign trail has been to toughen rather than soften his rhetoric.
He recently said he would ask unspecified allied countries to send special forces to help him fight criminal gangs.
Guayaquil is the capital of Guayas, one of seven provinces where a state of emergency has been in force for the past two months.
