QUITO, Ecuador — Five human heads were found hanging from ropes on a tourist beach in Ecuador, police said on Sunday.
As the country reels from a wave of violence related to drug trafficking, images published by Ecuadorian media outlets showed the bloody scene.
Next to the heads was a warning sign directed at alleged extortionists of fishermen in the small fishing port of Puerto Lopez. The ropes were fixed to wooden poles on the beach.
A police report attributed the incident to a conflict between criminal groups.
Drug-trafficking networks with links to transnational cartels are active in the area and have used fishermen and their small boats for their illicit activities, according to authorities.
A dispute for territory and control of drug-trafficking routes has triggered violent episodes across the Manabi province, where Puerto Lopez is located.
Police on Saturday said that they had carried out control and surveillance operations in Puerto Lopez amid an ongoing state of emergency enforced in nine of the Andean country’s 24 provinces, including Manabi.
The state of emergency seeks to contain the spiral of violence, especially in coastal areas, and restricts certain civil rights.
Police controls in Puerto Lopez increased after a massacre left six people dead two weeks ago. A second armed attack three days later left the same number of dead in Manta, also in the province of Manabi.
Puerto López is best known as a whale-watching destination and a hub for both domestic and foreign tourism.
Local media reported that the shooting formed part of a wider surge in violence across the town over the weekend, with at least nine people killed in separate incidents.
The bloodshed comes amid a broader deterioration in security across Ecuador, where violence tied to drug trafficking routes and gang rivalries has surged in recent years.
In October, five people were shot dead at a pool hall in Santo Domingo, west of the capital Quito, after gunmen opened fire during what police described as a gang-related dispute.
A month earlier, in September, another pool hall attack left seven people dead and four wounded, one of the deadliest single shooting incidents reported in the country this year.
More recently, in December, former Ecuador international footballer Mario Pineida, 33, was killed alongside another person during an armed attack in Guayaquil, the country’s largest city. A third victim was injured.
Ecuador has been engulfed in a wave of violence for more than four years after becoming a logistical center for the storage and distribution of drugs that enter mainly through the northern border with Colombia and the southern border with Peru.
2025 was Ecuador’s most violent year on record, with more than 9,000 homicides according to official figures, surpassing the record set in 2023 with 8,248 deaths.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Read more
