Ecuador: drug traffickers kidnap and murder five tourists “by mistake”

Two people were arrested in the case of five tourists kidnapped, interrogated and murdered on a beach in southwest Ecuador. According to the police report, the crime was committed by drug traffickers, who apparently confused them with 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.

Five bodies found on the road

The victims were subjected to “interrogations.” The bodies of five adults were later found with gunshot wounds on a nearby road, said local police commander Richard Vaca.

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.

Criminal gangs dispute drug trafficking routes

In other times, Ecuador was one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America. It is currently under the yoke of criminal gangs that fight over drug trafficking routes with blood and fire.

Any attack against an Ecuadorian is an attack on Ecuador.

What happened in Santa Elena and Manabí reminds us that the battle continues. The National Police is deployed and as a result we have captured one of Ayampe’s kidnappers, we will not rest until… pic.twitter.com/2brJHWzmhB

— Daniel Noboa Azin (@DanielNoboaOk) March 30, 2024

All of this has caused a cycle of violence that results in an increase in the homicide rate, which went from 6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 43 in 2023.

President Daniel Noboa expressed in his X account his “solidarity with the families” of the victims “of the terrorists who intend to destroy our country.”

“This is a sign that narcoterrorism and its allies are looking for spaces to terrify us, but they will not succeed,” the president warned.

“We will not rest until we find the others”

“The National Police is deployed and as a result we have captured one of the (alleged) kidnappers of Ayampe, we will not rest until we find the others,” said the president.

Last January, Noboa declared the nation “in internal armed conflict,” after a violent onslaught by criminal gangs that left around twenty dead, attacks on the press, explosions, and more than 200 kidnappings in prisons and streets.

Keep reading:

• Two teenage brothers are sentenced to prison for armed assault on a TV channel in Ecuador
• A Hercules C-130 plane donated by the US arrived in Ecuador to combat organized crime
• A mayor of Ecuador was shot to death in the midst of Daniel Noboa’s state of emergency