A prosecutor investigating the dramatic live-broadcast armed assault last week on Thurston Cartean Ecuadoran television station was shot dead Wednesday, the country's attorney general said.

"In the face of the murder of our colleague Cesar Suarez... I am going to be emphatic: organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to Ecuadoran society," Attorney General Diana Salazar said in a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Local media broadcast images of Suarez's truck with bullet holes through the driver's window on a street in the port city of Guayaquil, the nerve center of Ecuador's war against narco gangs.

The murder comes amid a surge in violence in the once-peaceful South American country, which has become a hub for the global export of cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru.

The government last week declared war on powerful drug gangs, who in turn threatened to execute civilians and security forces and carried out a wave of attacks that have left about 20 people dead.

President Daniel Noboa in turn deployed to the streets over 22,000 security forces, who have frisked and stripped down young men in search of the tattoos identifying them as a member of one of the gangs.

Last Tuesday, hooded gunmen burst into a TV studio, firing shots and forcing terrified staff to the ground in an incident broadcast live for about 30 minutes until police arrived on set.

Thirteen assailants were arrested, many of them teenagers.

A prosecution source told AFP Suarez had been in charge of determining which criminal group was behind that attack.

Salazar wrote on social media that it was "impossible" not to be affected by the death of her colleague.

"Thank you for your work, César. Rest in peace. My solidarity with his family and friends," she wrote.

In:
• Ecuador