At least ten people were killed and ten others injured in two shootings on Sunday in Guayaquil, one of Ecuador’s most violent cities under the control of drug dealers, prosecutors said on Monday.
They happened in two poor neighborhoods of Guayaquil.
First, there was a “shooting” in Siete Lagos, southern Guayaquil, in which prosecutors said “four dead and ten injured, including three minors” aged two, 13 and 14 were identified.
“Several shots were fired with weapons of different calibers,” Lt. Col. Ramiro Arequipa, police chief of Guayaquil’s southern district, said in a video posted to Twitter.
In another shooting in the north of this city, in the district of La Florida, “six people were killed,” the prosecutor said without further information.
The province of Guayas, of which Guayaquil is the capital, recorded the highest number of violent deaths since the beginning of the year (1,531 murders).
Such attacks are common in Ecuador, particularly in Guayaquil, a major port in the southwest, where 11 people died in two shootings in June. These shootings are the result of a power struggle between gangs fighting over markets and drug routes.
Sitting between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine, Ecuador is experiencing the worst escalation in violence in its recent history.
Drug-related crime has caused the homicide rate to nearly double between 2021 and 2022, rising from 14 to 25 per 100,000 people.
Clashes between drug gangs have also repeatedly led to massacres in Ecuadorian prisons, with more than 420 inmates killed since February 2021.