France 24<\/p>\n
Moreno<\/a>\u00a0spoke after a 12-hour deadline ended with the captors failing to demonstrate the hostages were still alive.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite our best efforts, we\u2019ve confirmed that these criminals never had the intention of handing them back safe and sound,\u201d Moreno said.<\/p>\n He said elite troops would soon be deployed to the northern border area where the employees of\u00a0El Comercio newspaper<\/a>\u00a0were last seen nearly three weeks ago while investigating a rise in\u00a0drug-fueled violence<\/a>.\u00a0Colombian\u00a0<\/a>President\u00a0Juan Manuel Santos<\/a>\u00a0dispatched his top military advisers to\u00a0Quito<\/a>\u00a0to assist in the military planning.<\/p>\n Moreno also offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Walter Arizala, better known by his alias Guacho, the leader of a holdout group of guerrillas from the demobilized\u00a0Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia<\/a>\u00a0that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.<\/p>\n Fears that the kidnapping had ended in tragedy emerged Thursday when a Colombian TV network said it had received gruesome photos purporting to show the bodies of the three men.<\/p>\n However forensic experts in both countries were unable to confirm the authenticity of the images, exasperating press groups and family members who say the government had been taking the incident too lightly.<\/p>\n Moreno on Thursday night rushed back from\u00a0a regional summit in Peru<\/a>\u00a0to deal with a crisis that has shaken Ecuadoreans\u2019 long held self-identity as a tiny, peaceful nation insulated from the drug-fueled violence raging across its border. In a late-night press conference, he said there was an \u201cenormous possibility\u201d the deaths were real and on Friday said authorities had obtained new, unspecified information that confirmed the three men had been killed.<\/p>\n As Moreno spoke, dozens of colleagues and friends of reporter Javier Ortega, photographer Paul Rivas and their driver Efrain Segarra gathered in mourning in a plaza outside the presidential palace under the slogan \u201cThree Are Missing,\u201d the same one that has featured in candlelight vigils held almost every night since their disappearance.<\/p>\n Both the Ecuadorean and Colombian governments have tried to limit the fallout from the kidnapping, with officials in both countries denying the men were being held inside their territory and even squabbling over Guacho\u2019s supposed nationality.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, authorities dismissed as fake a statement signed by the captors claiming the journalists were killed during a military raid coordinated by the two governments.<\/p>\n \u201cWe condemn the actions of the Colombian and Ecuadorean governments and their lack of seriousness in protecting the reporters\u2019 lives,\u201d Colombia\u2019s Foundation for Press Freedom said in a statement Thursday.<\/p>\n Moreno\u2019s promise of a \u201cdevastating\u201d military response was seen by many as a tacit acknowledgement that both governments had been too restrained.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen there is cooperation between the two countries the criminal will always fall,\u201d Santos said from the Summit of the Americas in Peru, promising to work closely with Moreno on a military campaign.<\/p>\n In a proof-of-life video released earlier this month, the three men identified their captors as members of the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a group of a few dozen combatants that authorities say is led by Guacho, a former FARC rebel. The group is believed responsible for recent deadly attacks in northern Ecuador against military targets.<\/p>\n Moreno announced last month that he was sending 12,000 soldiers and police to combat drug gangs and boost security along the border. That represents about 10 percent of the small nation\u2019s police officers and troops.<\/p>\n Ecuador is a major transit zone for Colombian-produced cocaine, with small boats carrying the drugs from the South American nation\u2019s Pacific shore to Central America and on to the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" France 24 Ecuador\u2019s President Lenin Moreno on Friday confirmed that three press workers kidnapped along the conflictive border with Colombia had been killed, opening the door to a military strike against their captors. Moreno\u00a0spoke after a 12-hour deadline ended with the captors failing to demonstrate the hostages were still alive. \u201cDespite our best efforts, we\u2019ve confirmed that these criminals never… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}