Gunman kills 10 and wounds two at a repair shop in Guayaquil, Ecuador – News

At least ten people died and two were injured after an attack on a car repair shop in a southwest neighborhood of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s main port city and economic center.

Target of the attack, Guayaquil is in a state of emergency due to the increase in violence caused by drug trafficking in the region. Ecuador is located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine.

The Attorney General’s Office of Ecuador points out that it has opened a preliminary investigation into the murder. At dawn, at the scene of the attack, bodies were seen lying on the sidewalk, amid pools of blood. All around, people were crying and hugging each other as police cordoned off the area.

“There was a shooting at a place where several people were drinking. The gunmen came with motor vehicles and killed whoever was here”, reports a witness who preferred not to be identified.

The police say they are investigating a recorded “violent act” and that “intelligence units” are carrying out “operational actions to identify those responsible”. Authorities have not yet announced who were arrested for this attack.

On Sunday morning, there were no more police or soldiers in the area. Only a torn yellow ribbon hanging on a door accounted for the police cordon deployed for the massacre in the Gómez Rendón sector.

Guayaquil has been in a state of emergency since April 1, a mechanism that allows the military to be mobilized in the streets and implement curfews. Ecuador, converted into a battleground for criminal gangs, has seen drug busts and violent deaths in the streets and prisons grow.

Located in the southwest of Ecuador, Guayaquil is one of the cities most affected by drug trafficking and the violence that plagues this South American country, whose position in the Pacific is strategic for the shipment of drugs to the United States and Europe.

To combat domestic crime, the government of President Guillermo Lasso declared criminal groups to be terrorists, allowing the Armed Forces to patrol the streets alongside the police.

Clashes between prisoners have left more than 420 prisoners dead since 2021, while outside prisons, the homicide rate almost doubled between that year and 2022, from 14 to 25 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to authorities.

The attack on Saturday, according to residents of the region, took place at a car repair shop where several people were watching a soccer game. “The owner woke up to clean up the blood with a bucket of water,” said Yolanda, a 55-year-old trader who asked to omit her last name.

Between January and April 1, in the cities of Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón alone, 555 homicides were recorded, according to authorities. Two weeks ago, in the province of Esmeraldas (northwest and on the border with Colombia), about thirty armed men opened fire on the population of an artisanal fishing port, killing nine people. Local media reported that in that province — also under a state of emergency — another four people were shot dead on Saturday.