A gang attack suspected against a billiard room in Ecuador left seven dead and four injured, police announced on Saturday. He marked the second attack of this type in less than a month in the same city during a wave of violence in the country.
Videos published on social networks have shown armed men, most of them masked, opening fire while people played billiards in the city of Santo Domingo, about 100 miles west of Quito.
“Presumably, this violent incident stems from a territorial dispute between organized crime groups and organized armed groups,” said Colonel Beatriz Benavides.
Ecuador is a starting point for cocaine expeditions to the United States and Europe, and a hub for criminal groups involved in extensions and contract murders – some of them linked to cartels based in Mexico, Colombia or Albania.
The end of Friday attack has been the fourth of its kind in recent weeks. In August, Seven people were killed In a billiard room in the same city. A Similar massacre of the swimming pool room took place in July in the tourist town in the southwest of General Playas, leaving at least nine dead.
In April, Armed men killed 12 people to a rooster combat ring 18 miles from Santo Domingo.
The equator recorded more than 4,600 homicides in the first half, an increase of 47% compared to the same period of 2024, according to data from the Equatorian Observatory of organized crime.
The violence of the criminal gangs continues tirelessly after the reuptake in June of the greatest drug lord in the country, Adolfo MacíasAlias Fito, after having escaped a maximum security prison in 2024.
In July, the Ecuadorian government Macías extradited in the United States, and he Pleaded not guilty. A Act of indictment at the seven years old Accused Macías, who directs the gang los choneros, and an unidentified co-accused with the international distribution of cocaine, the conspiracy and the counting of weapons, including the smuggling of firearms in the United States
Last year, the United States ranked Los Choneros as one of the most violent gangs and confirmed its link with Mexican drug cartelswhich threatens the equator and the surrounding region
