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full screen Coast Guard in an operation against suspected drug gangs. The picture is from last Thursday. Photo: Cesar Munoz/AP/TT
Two brutal attacks that claimed several lives shake Ecuador, where the progress of drug cartels spreads terror.
Armed criminal groups in the country have carried out two deadly attacks in as many days. At least eight people were killed when an armed gang attacked a group of people on Saturday night in the port city of Guayaquil. An equal number of people were injured when the gang arrived in a vehicle in the Guasmo neighborhood and opened fire on the victims.
No group has claimed responsibility, but Guayaquil in particular and Ecuador in general have become the new crime hotbed for rival drug cartels in Latin America – often with close ties to or as part of drug gangs in Mexico and neighboring Colombia.
On Friday, an armed group kidnapped several people in the coastal province of Manabi. Police suspect the criminal gang believed the visiting tourists were members of a rival drug cartel.
Five of the kidnapped were later found murdered. Six people, five of whom were minors, could be acquitted by the police. Two suspected perpetrators were arrested by the police.
“The murders in Manabi remind us that the battle continues. Narco-terrorism and those who support it are trying to find ways to scare us, but they will fail,” President Daniel Noboa wrote on social media.