At least ten people were killed and another ten wounded in two exchanges of fire yesterday in Guayaquil, the Ecuadorian city among those worst hit by a wave of violence attributed to drug-trafficking gangs, the prosecutor’s office announced.

The events unfolded in two poor districts of Guayaquil.

An “exchange of fire” first broke out in Siete Lagos, a southern district, as a result of which “four people” lost their lives and “ten others, including three minors” aged two, 13 and 14, were injured, according to the prosecutor’s office.

“Weapons of various calibers” were used, Ramiro Arequipa, the chief of police in the southern region of Guayaquil, said in a video uploaded to Twitter.

Then a second exchange of fire, in the northern part of the city, in the neighborhood of La Florida, resulted in the loss of the lives of “six people”, the prosecutor’s office said, without going into further details.

The province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil, has recorded the most deaths from the wave of violence of any other since the beginning of the year (1,531 murders).

Attacks of this kind have now become common in Ecuador, most notably in Guayaquil, the major port in the southwestern part of the country where 11 people were killed in June in two gunmen’s attacks. Gunfights and attacks on authorities are linked to gang conflicts for power, for control of markets and drug-trafficking routes.

Between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine-producing countries, Ecuador is experiencing the worst escalation of violence in its modern history.

Gang-related crime nearly doubled its homicide rate in 2022 compared to 2021: from 14 to 25 per 100,000 residents, according to official data.

Gang conflicts have also been blamed for repeated prison massacres in Ecuador, where more than 420 inmates have been killed since February 2021.