Police have identified the remains as those of five men who had been reported missing days earlier. They ranged between 20 and 34 years in age.<\/p>\n
Officials told local media one of them had a criminal record for gun possession. <\/p>\n
Their bodies have not yet been located. <\/p>\n
According to figures released by the interior ministry, 2025 was the most violent on record in Ecuador, with homicide rates reaching an all-time high at 9,176 murders.<\/p>\n
Ecuador – which is located between Colombia and the Peru, the world’s two largest producers of cocaine – has become a key transit country for illegal drugs.<\/p>\n
Local gangs have forged alliances with powerful Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, counternarcotics experts say.<\/p>\n
As well as smuggling drugs, the criminal gangs force local businesses to pay “protection money” and attack those who refuse.<\/p>\n
On 28 December, six people – including a two-year-old child – were killed and another three injured when gunmen opened fire at a group of people standing on the beachfront in Puerto L\u00f3pez.<\/p>\n
Police said the shooting and another the previous day, in which another three people were killed, were triggered by a battle for control of the town between two rival factions of the Los Choneros gang.<\/p>\n
Los Choneros is one of the main drivers of the deadly gang violence which has rocked Ecuador.<\/p>\n
In September, the US state department added the group to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations.<\/p>\n
Its leader, known as Fito, was extradited to the United States in July of last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have identified the remains as those of five men who had been reported missing days earlier. They…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-366703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}