At least five people were killed and eight injured Sunday when three men opened fire inside a home in Guayaquil, one of Ecuador's hardest-hit crime and drug trafficking cities, police said.
According to witnesses, three men on a motorcycle arrived in the area of Isla Trinitaria, in the south of the city, and entered the house where "they fired several shots". "So far, we count five dead and eight wounded," police Colonel Fabary Montalvo told reporters. One of the dead was a police officer who was shot several times in the head, he said.
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 led to a near doubling of the homicide rate between 2021 and 2022, from 14 to 25 per 100,000 population.
On 25 May, at least six people died and as many were injured after gunmen opened fire at a restaurant in the tourist town of Montañita. Two days earlier, gunmen entered a funeral home in the nearby port of Manta and opened fire on participants in a funeral vigil, killing four and wounding eight.
Authorities attribute the violence to conflicts between gangs and cartels over control of trafficking routes along the Pacific, a strategic corridor for the movement of drugs to the United States and Europe.