Five people killed in Ecuador in a factory linked to exports

Five people were shot dead on Tuesday at a factory linked to export containers in Nobol, a small town in Ecuador; police are considering the incident a possible settling of scores between criminal gangs.

A police report said the five victims were men – the factory owner, his stepson, a truck driver and two private security guards – who were unable to prevent the attackers from entering the factory by surprise through the back of the factory.

The incident occurred in Nobol — a small town 252 kilometers southwest of Quito — located in the province of Guayas, one of those that registers highest rates of violence in the country.

The report highlighted that three of the deceased had criminal records for drug trafficking and robbery and added that the perpetrators took the electronic memory where the images recorded by the security cameras were recorded.

The police chief of the area where the violent incident occurred, Colonel Marcelo Castillo, stated that “the motive is ruled out as robbery, because the owner was found with all his valuables inside his car.”

He added that the scene of the crime was a workshop for maintaining export containers. “This was a façade, because here the containers were contaminated (with drugs),” said Castillo.

The incident occurred days after five members of a family, two of them minors, were shot to death in a rural area of ​​Samborondón, near Guayaquil, also in the province of Guayas.

Since the beginning of 2021, Ecuador has been in the midst of a spiral of uncontrollable violence resulting from what authorities have described as clashes between criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking and with close ties to the Colombian and Mexican cartels, which lead them to dispute drug distribution routes and territories.

In the first half of 2024, between Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, all located in the province of Guayas, 1,040 violent deaths were recorded, according to police data, while at the national level, between January and July 21, there were 3,369.

To deal with the situation, since the beginning of January President Daniel Noboa declared a state of internal armed conflictwhich allowed the armed forces to support the police in controlling the country’s internal security.

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