Ecuador’s attorney general’s office has confirmed that incinerated bodies found on Christmas Eve belong to the four children missing since early December, in a case posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”.

The four boys – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game on 8 December when they were apprehended by 16 air force soldiers.

They have become known as the “Guayaquil Four”.

The bodies were found on Christmas Eve in the Taura region, where the military allegedly released them near an air force base. DNA testing was required to identify the bodies.