QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuadoran authorities arrested three people in connection to a gang-related shooting that left nine dead in the northern coastal city of Esmeraldas, President Guillermo Lasso said on Wednesday.
Around 30 men on motorcycles and boats opened fire indiscriminately on a crowd at a fishing port in the city on Tuesday, CCTV images showed, with passers-by jumping into the water to escape the bullets.
“There are three people in custody from the gang Los Tiguerones, with strong indications that they participated in the attack,” Lasso said on Twitter.
Around 2,000 military personnel were deployed in the city and 75 raids were carried out in search of the perpetrators.
Gangs and traffickers have been vying for control of the lucrative trade in Esmeraldas, whose location on the Pacific coast serves as a corridor for drug trafficking to Europe and the United States.
Ecuador is sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine producers, and has itself become a hub for the global drug trade in recent years.
Last year, Ecuador seized more than 200 tons of drugs bound for European ports, with drug-related violence rapidly increasing.
The country’s murder rate almost doubled between 2021 and 2022, from 14 to 25 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official figures.
© Agence France-Presse