Ten dead in Guayaquil in a new massacre carried out by hitmen

Ecuadorian police officers arrive at the site where 10 people were murdered, this Sunday, in Guayaquil. GERARDO MENOSCAL (AFP)

The mercenaries arrived without looking at anyone in a new massacre that they carried out on Gómez Rendón and 14 streets, in a densely inhabited neighborhood in the south of Guayaquil.

It was 8:40 p.m. this Saturday, when a group of people including men, women and children were on the sidewalk, just outside a mechanical workshop.

The soccer game that had brought them together in the place had finished when they were surprised by hitmen, armed with rifles who fired without discrimination.

They murdered 10 men who were left lying on the sidewalk, and three other people were injured, including a five-year-old girl, who is hospitalized, according to the Ecuadorian Police.

"We believe that it is a fight of organized criminal groups, the fight for power, for territory," William Villarroel, commander of the Guayaquil Police reported this Sunday.

So far there is no detainee linked to the massacre.

Nearly 80 ballistic evidence were collected at the scene, which allow us to measure the number of times the attackers fired.

This violent act occurs when the city is under a state of emergency decreed by President Guillermo Lasso, in an attempt to control the insecurity that has been hitting the South American country for two years and that is concentrated above all in Guayaquil, which registers 770 homicides. what's going on in 2023.

In this coastal city of Ecuador, the authorities have identified a dozen criminal gangs that operate as the executing arm for the distribution and export of cocaine through the city's ports, directly linked to the Mexican Jalisco Nueva Generación and Sinaloa cartels.

"This group would be dedicated to drug trafficking, threats and car theft," Commander Villarroel said of the hit men in the massacre, without giving more details about who they would be, or how many individuals were involved in the attack.

The weekend has been particularly violent for the country, hours before the massacre, four other people were killed.

While in the city of Atacames, in the province of Esmeraldas, in the north of the country, five people were killed, including a 13-year-old teenager.

In the city of Quevedo, also on the Ecuadorian coast, five other young people between the ages of 20 and 28 were found beheaded and dismembered in jute sacks.

The cases are under investigation and there are no results from those responsible for the events that keep the population in fear, who have expressed their weariness in public demonstrations in the streets of various cities in the country, where they have come out to protest against insecurity and demand that the government A strategy that works.

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