Seven people were shot dead in Ecuador during an attack in the Guayaquil region (southwest), the epicenter of crime in the country, police announced on Saturday.
The bodies with gunshot wounds of seven men, including two minors, were found in Nobol, in the province of Guayas, about forty kilometers from Guayaquil, the police said in a press release. Two of the killed had criminal records.
The massacre, motivated by revenge according to the local press citing police sources, took place during the night from Friday to Saturday and the police took several hours to locate all the bodies.
Killings are becoming more and more frequent in Ecuador, where the homicide rate increased from 6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 43 per 100,000 in 2023.
Situated between Colombia and Peru – the world’s two main producers of cocaine – the country has become a logistics hub for shipping the drug to the United States and Europe.
At the end of March, eight people were murdered in Guayaquil, including five Ecuadorian tourists kidnapped and killed on a beach after being mistaken for rivals of the attackers.
