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full screen Soldiers patrol in Ecuador’s capital Quito ahead of this weekend’s referendum. Photo: Dolores Ochoa/AP/TT
Mayor Jorge Maldonado of the mining town of Portovelo in Ecuador was shot dead on Friday. It is the third assassination of a mayor in the country within a month.
Maldonado was shot dead in his spare time by two perpetrators on a motorcycle, the police on X announce.
Two days earlier, José Sánchez, mayor of the town of Camilo Ponce Enríquez, was shot dead. Last month, the country’s youngest mayor, 27-year-old Brigitte García, was found shot to death in a car together with the municipal director of the city of San Vicente.
On Sunday, millions of Ecuadorians go to the polls to vote in a referendum on tougher measures against organized crime. Bloody wars between drug cartels are raging in the country, and in January President Daniel Noboa tasked the military with cracking down on the various gangs.