Two armed attacks on civilians killed at least 14 people on Sunday in a coastal area in Ecuador, where drug gangs are against influence, the police announced.
“We counted 12 people dead and three wounded,” said Oscar Valencia, head of the police in El Embalami, in the southwest of Ecuador.
He pointed out that the attackers themselves shot a second group of civilians near the site of the first operation; The killing of two additional people.
The Sunday operation occurred in front of a alcohol store in La Gawaias near El Embalami. Valencia said that people in two small trucks attacked “pistols and rifles” civilians gathered out. He explained, “They shot all directions.”
Ecuador is one of the countries that record the highest levels of violence in the region, and the average murder reached 38 per 100,000 people in 2024.
During the first five months of 2025, Ecuador witnessed 4051 killings, according to official figures.
In recent years, the country has become a theater of violent clashes related to drug trafficking by virtue of its geographical location between Colombia and Peru, the largest cocaine producers in the world, and its strategic ports on the Pacific Ocean. 73 percent of the world produced in Ecuador, according to official figures.
The Ecuadorian President Daniel Nuboa pledged during the letter of the section he delivered for his second term in May, to “save” his country from “mafia” drug trafficking.
