Thousands of Ecuadorians flee their homes as gang violence worsens

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By Yury Garcia and Alexandra Valencia Reuters | Posted by TOE For one grandmother, it was when bullets began hitting the rooftops of her neighborhood that she decided she would have to leave the housing development where she had lived for nearly 20 years. A sharp rise in fighting between gang factions in Ecuador has prompted thousands ​of families to flee and abandon their homes to the gangs, who strip the houses for drug money or use them to hide kidnapping victims, according to residents and police. One of the areas ‌that has been the site of the heaviest bloodshed is the Nueva Prosperina district in the coastal city of Guayaquil, where fighting between factions of the Los Tiguerones gang last year killed 22 people. Among those who fled was a 66-year-old woman, who, like other residents of the district Reuters spoke to for this story, asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals from the gangs. Armed groups were targeting people indiscriminately, assuming that an...
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Rescue efforts halted after South African building collapse where 33 died

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Officials in the South African city of George halted the search for survivors and more bodies on Friday at the site of a collapsed building where 33 people died.

Rescue personnel and volunteers have been combing through the rubble for 11 days, after the five-storey residential building under construction in the city east of Cape Town crumbled, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

The Western Cape government said it now believed 62 people were at the site at the time of the disaster. Twenty-nine people survived after being rescued.

At one stage municipal officials believed 81 people were on site when the building came down.

“The site is empty. We have done our job,” Anton Bredell, a Western Cape provincial official, told reporters.

It is believed that migrants from neighbouring Malawi and Zimbabwe were working at the construction site as well as South Africans.

A spokesperson for Malawi’s foreign affairs ministry said nine Malawians were confirmed to have died in the incident and 11 had been rescued, two of whom were still in hospital.

The cause of the building collapse has not yet been established. Investigations are under way.

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the site on Thursday and met families of the victims.

REUTERS



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/cu8lz91

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