GUAYAQUIL: Ecuadoran police said eight people were killed Tuesday in two armed attacks in the country’s largest city Guayaquil, as criminal gangs battled for control of lucrative drug trafficking routes.
Eight individuals died of “gunshot wounds,“ police said, in separate attacks in the city’s northern neighborhoods.
In the aftermath of the shootings, an AFP reporter witnessed roads and sidewalks marked with pools of blood, scores of heavily armed police combing the scene and distraught relatives looking for their loved ones.
A flood of cocaine from Colombia and Peru through Ecuadoran ports has drawn a who’s who of mafias from Albania to Italy to Mexico to this once-safe Andean nation.
Guayaquil -- a once prosperous port city -- has become the epicenter of the violence.
Recently reelected President Daniel Noboa has vowed to tackle the drug gangs head on, with limited success.
On Tuesday he extended a months-old state of emergency, saying an “extraordinary response” was still needed.
Between January and April, Ecuador recorded 3,084 homicides, according to official figures.
Experts believe this is the most violent start to the year that the country has experienced, with one murder per hour.
