At least five people were killed and eight others wounded Sunday when three men opened fire inside a home in Guayaquil, one of the cities hardest hit by crime and drug trafficking in Ecuador, police said.
"So far we have five people dead and eight people injured, who are in different health centers in the city," police Colonel Fabary Montalvo told reporters.
One of the deceased, Montalvo said, is a police officer who was shot several times in the head. The bodies of a man and a woman were found outside the house where, according to local media, a party was being held.
The colonel said that, according to witnesses, three men on a motorcycle arrived at the Isla Trinitaria sector, in the south of Guayaquil, got out of the vehicle and entered the home, where "they made several detonations with firearms."
Ecuadorian police officers inspect a workshop following a multiple murder that left 10 dead in downtown Guayaquil, Ecuador on April 30, 2023. AFP Photo
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"More than 10 ballistic evidence was found in the place which are being investigated to verify their origin," Montalvo said.
The authorities have not specified the reasons for this new attack in Guayaquil.
Isla Trinitaria is one of the most disadvantaged enclaves of Guayaquil, a city of about 2.8 million inhabitants. After the shooting, the streets of this popular neighborhood, formed mostly by informal buildings, were blocked by police and forensic cars.
Guayaquil, a city mired in the violence of drug gangs, has become the scene of massacres in streets and prisons.
Last April, another shooting left a dozen dead and three wounded. And in the neighboring city of Duran this week a prosecutor handling homicide cases was murdered.
Between January and May in the cities of Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón (southwest) there were more than 1,000 murders, according to police.
In Ecuador, the murder rate has almost doubled from one year to the next, from 14 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021 to 25 in 2022. AFP Photo
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In Ecuador, the murder rate has nearly doubled from year to year, from 14 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021 to 25 in 2022, according to authorities.
In prisons, since February 2021, more than 420 inmates have been reported dead amid violent clashes between rival gangs linked to drug trafficking. Ecuadorian authorities attribute these confrontations, which leave bodies dismembered and burned, to the struggle for territory to transport the drug.
Ecuador has become a strategic point for transporting drugs to the United States and Europe. Located between Colombia and Peru, the world's largest producers of cocaine, it has suffered an increase in criminal violence and drug trafficking since last year.
In 2022, authorities seized more than 200 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine. So far in 2023, police have seized 87 tons of drugs, of which 44 were seized in Guayaquil and neighboring cities.
Source: AFP
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