Authorities reported on Tuesday that the motorcade carrying Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa was attacked by a group of protesters in a town in the south of the Andean country amid an indigenous strike that began more than two weeks ago against the rise in the price of diesel fuel.

Energy Minister Inés Manzano reported that the incident occurred when the president's motorcade was heading to an area for the delivery of public works.

She specified that as they approached the location where the activity was to take place, some 500 people appeared in an aggressive manner and threw stones and other objects at the vehicles in the presidential motorcade.

Manzano, who was accompanying the president, said she filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office for ‘attempted murder of the president.’

‘There are bullet marks on the president's car,’ she told reporters, warning that ‘this will not go unpunished.’ Five people were arrested after the incident.

According to the government's version, the incident took place in the town of El Tambo, 382 kilometres south of the Ecuadorian capital, in the midst of a national strike called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, the largest of its kind in the country, which is maintaining intermittent blockades of major roads in at least three provinces.

"Do not follow bad examples, such as those who sought to prevent us from being here with you today and attempted to attack us. Such attacks are not acceptable in the new Ecuador," said Noboa during an event after the attack.

This comes at a time when Ecuador is under a state of emergency in 12 provinces, decreed by the government to deal with protests that, after two weeks, have left one indigenous person dead, 12 soldiers wounded, and more than a hundred detained, 12 of whom are accused of alleged terrorism, according to the authorities.

The Indigenous Confederation promoting the strike indicated on social media that the communities of El Tambo canton ‘denounce brutal police and military action at the point of resistance’.