The decapitated bodies of two people were found Monday hanging from a bridge in the town of Esmeraldas, on Ecuador's northwest coast, police said in the drug-ridden country.
The city of Esmeraldas is the capital of the province of the same name, which borders the Colombian department of Nariño.
Last February, the Ecuadorian police had already found two bodies tied up and suspended from a bridge in the city of Durán (southwest), a spectacular method of assassination which is often used by Mexican cartels.
Explosive attacks were also committed in the months that followed in several regions of the country, such as in August in the port of Guayaquil (near Durán), where five people died.
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In the space of two weeks, two attacks also hit the house of former footballer Frickson Erazo, without causing any casualties.
The Ecuadorian player, who played in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, is a candidate for mayor of Esmeraldas in the elections next February.
Drug traffickers, some linked to Mexican cartels, are waging a war for power on the streets and in prisons across the country, where bloody massacres have claimed nearly 400 lives since February 2021. The homicide rate, which has nearly doubled to reach a rate of 14 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, increased to 18 between January and October 2022.
Located between Colombia and Peru, the world's largest producer of cocaine, Ecuador has gone from being a drug transit country to a major distribution center to Europe and the United States.
In 2021, authorities seized a record 210 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine.
Since the beginning of the year, seizures have totaled 160 tonnes.