Five Ecuadorian tourists were abducted and murdered on Ayabe Beach in southwestern Ecuador after assailants mistakenly thought the tourists were members of a rival gang, with President Daniel Noboa expressing his “solidarity with the families” of the victims today.
The country’s president said on X’s account that a person has been arrested in a case that shows drug traffickers “seek to sow terror.”
“We will not rest until we find the others,” Noboa said. About 20 gunmen in total were involved in the kidnapping, according to local police commander Richard Vaca.
Among the group of tourists, who arrived in Ayabe on Thursday afternoon, were six adults and five children.
The victims were subjected to “interrogations”, Commander Vaca said. The bodies of five adults were found with bullet wounds hours later on a nearby road.
The police commander stressed that the perpetrators “obviously confused these people thinking they belong to a rival gang”.
Noboa, 36, who was elected in November as the youngest president in the country’s history, has faced an unprecedented wave of violence since Jan. 7, when the No. 1 public danger escaped from prison in Guayaquil (southwest) in Ecuador, the head of the country’s most powerful gang, Jose Adolfo Macias, or “Fito.” It remains elusive at this stage.
“Fito’s” escape was followed by riots in several Ecuadorian prisons and an upsurge in gang violence on the streets – bomb blasts, murders, and even a live TV studio raid by masked gunmen. To bring the situation under control, Ecuador’s right-wing president Noboa declared a state of emergency and “war” on gangs, deploying 20,000 members of the armed forces inside.
Despite the measures, armed violence has not stopped. Yesterday Friday, four people, including a military man, were killed in Manda town, Manabi.
Last weekend, the mayor of San Vicente, in the same province, was shot dead.
On Wednesday, a riot at a prison in Guayaquil (southwest) resulted in three deaths and six injuries.
Once an oasis of peace and tranquility in Latin America, Ecuador, between Colombia and Peru, the two countries with the largest cocaine production in the world, has been torn apart in recent years by a wave of gang violence vying for control of trafficking routes and prisons.
From 2018 to 2023, the homicide rate took off, increasing by nearly 800%, from 6 to 46 murders per 100,000 residents. In 2023, authorities counted over 7,800 homicides.
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