Suspected Gang Attack In Ecuador Kills Seven

A suspected gang attack on a pool hall in Ecuador overnight left seven dead and four wounded, police said Saturday.

Videos posted on social media showed gunmen, most of them masked, opening fire as people play billiards in Santo Domingo, 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of Quito.

“Presumably this violent incident stems from a territorial dispute between organized crime groups and organized armed groups,” police Colonel Beatriz Benavides said.

Ecuador is a point of departure for cocaine shipments to the United States and Europe, and a hub for criminal groups involved in extortion and contract killings — some of them linked to cartels based in Mexico, Colombian or Albania.

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The late Friday attack was the fourth of its kind in recent weeks. In August, seven people were killed in a pool hall in the same city.

Ecuador recorded more than 4,600 homicides in the first half of the year, a 47-percent increase from the same period of 2024, data from the Ecuadoran Observatory of Organized Crime shows.

In June, President Daniel Noboa’s government captured the country’s top gang leader, who was extradited the following month to the United States to face drug and arms trafficking charges.