Police say 8 killed and 3 injured at a nightclub in Ecuador as violence surges

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QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — A shooting at a nightclub in Ecuador on Sunday killed eight people and injured three others in the latest violent incident to hit the spiraling South American country, authorities said.

The shooting took place in the rural area of Santa Lucía in the coastal province of Guayas, considered one of the country’s most dangerous. Seven of the victims, who were between 20 and 40 years old, died at the club and the eighth one at a hospital, according to a police statement.

Authorities said the heavily armed suspects arrived on motorcycles and in two vehicles.

It wasn’t immediately known what prompted the shooting, which came two days after gunmen attacked a boat near El Oro province along the country’s southwest coast. Four people were killed in that incident and several others remain missing after suspects launched explosives at the boat.

Dozens of people have been killed in recent months, most of them in four of Ecuador’s coastal provinces: El Oro, Guayas, Manabí and Los Ríos. They all remain under a state of emergency.

Authorities have blamed the wave of violence on disputes among organized crime groups linked to transnational drug cartels that have expanded their operations, especially in the Pacific region, where drugs are shipped to Central America, the United States and Europe.

More than 4,600 people have been killed so far this year in the country of some 18 million inhabitants. Last year, nearly 7,000 killings were reported, down from more than 8,000 in 2023, a record number.