At least ten people were killed overnight when highly armed gunmen opened fire outside a shop in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s main port city and industrial powerhouse.
According to the report, the city is currently under a state of emergency owing to rising drug violence.
Witnesses told police that the brutal attack took place inside a repair shop in the city’s southwest while patrons were drinking and watching a football match on television.
According to General Willian Villarroel, who is in charge of the police force in Guayaquil and the neighbouring municipalities of Duran and Samborondon, several individuals arrived in a black truck, climbed out of the vehicle, and then began firing “long weapons” at the local populace.
Hours later, bodies were still lying in pools of blood on the pavement as others wept and comforted one another behind a police barrier.
“I don’t feel comfortable living like this,” one neighbor told AFP, asking not to be named. “We can’t go out with our families, with our children.”
In addition to those killed, three people were wounded, “unfortunately including a five-year-old girl who is stable and is going to be operated for shrapnel,” Villarroel said.
He said police believed the massacre was the result of “a fight between organized criminal groups — a fight for power and territory.”
