(Guayaquil) A new armed attack Monday in the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil, the second since the beginning of June, left at least six dead and eight injured, announced the authorities of the city, one of the most affected by crime and drug trafficking.
Referring to a settling of accounts between rival gangs, Colonel Marcelo Castillo, police chief of the southern district of Guayaquil, indicated that six people had died. The prosecution later added that eight people were injured and transported to hospitals in the area.
No suspects have been arrested so far, prosecutors said.
Colonel Castillo explained that the attack occurred early Monday in a popular neighborhood of Guayaquil. More than a dozen people were in the street when a “black vehicle arrived, four or five people got out” to fire shots, he said.
“This is pure retaliation for previous acts of violence. They kill each other without mercy,” he added.
One of those killed had a criminal record for criminal association, and one of the injured for drug trafficking, Col. Castillo said. A total of 132 bullet holes, from short and long weapons, were found at the crime scene.
Such attacks have become frequent in Ecuador, mainly in Guayaquil, a major port in the southwest of the country. They are the result of a power struggle between gangs fighting over markets and drug routes. Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest cocaine producers, Ecuador is experiencing the worst escalation of violence in its recent history.
Drug-related crime has caused the homicide rate to nearly double between 2021 and 2022, from 14 to 25 per 100,000 population.
On June 4, five people died, including a policeman, and eight were injured when three men opened fire inside a house in Guayaquil.
On May 25, gunmen opened fire at a restaurant in the tourist town of Montañita, killing six and injuring six.
Two days earlier, gunmen entered a funeral parlor in the nearby port of Manta and opened fire on attendees of a funeral wake, killing four and injuring eight.
In April, around 30 armed men carried out a bloody raid in the fishing port of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border, killing nine people by gunfire.
Clashes between drug gangs have also led to repeated massacres in the country’s prisons, with more than 420 inmates killed since February 2021.