Ecuador: Massacre leaves seven people dead, including two minors

Seven people died, including two minors, in an armed attack in a town near the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, the police reported this Saturday.

“Seven male citizens were recovered without vital signs, with several gunshot wounds” in Nobol, province of Guayas (southwest), the police said in a message sent to the media.

“Of the 7 bodies, 2 are identified as minors and two have criminal records”adds the note.

The massacre occurred on Friday night and the authorities took several hours to locate all the bodies, since “They were in different parts of the sector.”

Citing police sources, local media claim that apparently the reason for the massacre was revenge.

Nobol is about 42 kilometers from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s crime epicenter city, plagued in recent years by gangs that work hand in hand with drug trafficking cartels.

Massacres are increasingly common in the country, whose ports on the Pacific are used by mafia bosses to export cocaine.

At the end of March, eight people were shot dead in Guayaquil, five of them tourists who had previously been kidnapped on a beach.

Located between Colombia and Peru, the largest cocaine producers in the world, the homicide rate in Ecuador went from 6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 43 in 2023.

In January, President Daniel Noboa declared the nation in internal armed conflict, after a violent attack by criminal gangs that left twenty people dead.