2024-04-02 11:30:56
Two people were arrested on Saturday in the case of five tourists kidnapped, interrogated and murdered on a beach in southwestern Ecuador, by drug traffickers who apparently mistook them for members of a rival gang.
Six Ecuadorian adults and five children, who had arrived at the Ayampe resort on Thursday afternoon, were kidnapped the next day when around twenty armed people broke into their hotel.
The victims were subjected to “interrogation” and the bodies of five adults were found with gunshot wounds on a nearby road, said local police commander Richard Vaca.
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The tourists had no ties to criminal organizations, but the attackers “apparently confused these individuals as their adversaries in (…) the micro-trafficking dispute in the sector,” he added.
In the capture operation, automatic rifles, pistols, explosives and ammunition were seized.
Ecuador, once one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America, is under the yoke of criminal gangs that fight over drug trafficking routes with blood and fire. A cycle of violence that has caused an increase in the homicide rate, which went from 6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record of 43 in 2023.
President Daniel Noboa He expressed his “solidarity with the families” of the victims on Saturday on his X account.
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“This is a sign that narcoterrorism and its allies are looking for spaces to scare us, but they will not succeed,” he warned.
In January, Noboa declared the nation in internal armed conflict, after a violent attack by criminal gangs that left around twenty dead, attacks on the press, explosions and more than 200 kidnappings in prisons and streets.
LDAV
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2024-04-02 11:30:56