Criminals dressed in military false uniforms opened fire on spectators during a rural fighter EcuadorKilling 12 unarmed people and injuring several others, police said in the South American nation on Friday prey to violence.
Thursday evening attacks of the attack on Thursday evening showed a group of at least five men entering the arena and opening fire with automatic rifles on a crowd of dozens in the rural community of Valence in the northwest of the equator.
The attackers were dressed in replica military uniforms – a common tactic of criminal gangs in the countryThis has an average murder every hour at the beginning of the year when the cartels competed for the control of cocaine roads which cross the ports of the equator.
The images, broadcast on social networks, have shown that the spectators threw themselves on the ground and hid under their seats.
“We have 12 people who died following an armed attack by a criminal group,” police colonel Renan Miller Rivera said on Friday. He said several people had been injured without giving a number.
Police have held four people, including an “target of intermediate value”, chief of the national police Victor Hugo Zarate wrote on social networks. The police said The four suspects would have been part of an organized criminal group called “Los R7”.
After the attack, the police found “military style uniforms” and two abandoned cars on a neighboring highway, added Miller Rivera. One of the cars had been burnt down, the other had overturned.
Police Video published on social networks showing that officers recovering hidden evidence under bags and branches of trees. The video also showed weapons and money recovered as well as an image of four people in detention with their blurred faces.
Ecuador National Police
In addition to the uniforms, the police said they had recovered eight rifles, four pistols, three hunting rifles, eight magazines, 11 mobile phones, ballistic helmets and tactical gloves.
The Ecuador is home to around 20 criminal gangs – with striking names like “LOS Freddy Kruegers” and “The Peaky Blinders” – Involved in traffic, removal and extortion. They wreaked havoc in the country of 18 million hirings between the largest cocaine producers in the world, Peru and Colombia.
In recent years, the nation has been plunged into violence through the rapid spread of transnational cartels that use its ports to send drugs to the United States and Europe.
About 73% of world cocaine goes through the equator, according to a report from the Ministry of the Interior.
Large parts of the country are under the state of emergency recently renewed by President Daniel Noboawhich was re -elected to a second term in the elections last Sunday.
Ecuador gangs targeted by the United States
On the campaign track, Noboa suggested that American special forces should be deployed in Ecuador to combat drug violence and floating legal reforms to allow American bases to operate in the country.
At least two leaders of high-level equatorial gangs targeted by the United States made the headlines this year. Earlier this month, the fugitive chief of “Los Cheronos” who was counting on hitmen, bribes and military weapons to do business accused in New York On the accusations, he imported thousands of pounds of cocaine in the United States. José Adolfo Macías Villamar – whose nickname is “Fito” – escaped from an equator prison last year and is not in American custody.
In 2024, the The sanctions imposed on the US Treasury On “Los Choneros”.
Earlier this year, a leader in one of the largest unions in Ecuador’s crime, “Los Lobos”, was arrested at home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. Carlos D, widely known by his alias “El Chino”, was the second commander of “Los Lobos” and “considered a target of great value,” the armed forces said in a press release.
THE The United States last year said Los Lobos be the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador.