Gunmen disguised as soldiers kill 12 people at Ecuador cockfight

Ecuadorian soldiers at the state-owned TV station that gang members stormed. Photo: AFP
Criminals dressed in fake military uniforms opened fire on
spectators at a cockfight in rural Ecuador, killing 12 unarmed people and
wounding several others, police in the violence-plagued South American nation
said Friday.
Security footage of Thursday night's attack showed a group
of at least five men entering the arena and opening fire with automatic rifles
on a crowd of dozens in the rural community of La Valencia in northwest
Ecuador.
The attackers were dressed in replica military uniforms -- a
common tactic of criminal gangs in the country, which averaged a killing every
hour at the start of the year as cartels vie for control over cocaine routes
that pass through Ecuador's ports.
The footage, circulated on social media, showed spectators
flinging themselves to the ground and taking cover under their seats.
"We have 12 people deceased as a result of an armed
attack by a criminal group," police colonel Renan Miller Rivera said in a
statement Friday.
He said several people were injured, without giving a
number.
Police have detained four people, including a "target
of intermediate value," national police chief Victor Hugo Zarate wrote on
the X social platform.
After the attack, police found discarded
"military-style uniforms" and two abandoned cars on a nearby highway,
Miller Rivera added. One of the cars had been set on fire, the other had
overturned.
Ecuador is home to around 20 criminal gangs involved in
trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. They have wreaked havoc in the country
of 18 million squeezed between the world's biggest cocaine producers, Peru and
Colombia.
In recent years, the nation has been plunged into violence
by the rapid spread of transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs
to the United States and Europe.
About 73 percent of the world's cocaine passes through
Ecuador, according to an interior ministry report.
Large parts of the country are under a state of emergency
recently renewed by President Daniel Noboa, who was re-elected to a second term
in elections last Sunday.
On the campaign trail, he suggested US special forces should
be deployed to Ecuador to tackle drug violence and floated legal reforms to
allow US bases to operate in the country.
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