At least 22 people have been brutally killed in Ecuador’s port city of Guayaquil after rival factions of a drug trafficking gang vying for control over territory exchanged gunfire.

Gun battles broke out across the northern neighborhood of Nueva Prosperina on Thursday afternoon between members of criminal group Los Tiguerones, local police chief Pablo Davila told reporters. 

‘Yesterday criminals killed each other in these certain parts of town,’ Davila said.

‘The problem is that they know each other, they know where they live, and they’re fighting over who has power over that territory.’

Police launched an offensive in response, carrying out around 200 searches and seizing guns and ammunition. 

Fourteen people, including two minors, were arrested in the area.

Several of those killed and arrested had criminal records, according to authorities, with charges ranging from robbery to drug trafficking.

Local paper El Universo described the killing as a ‘massacre and said that several homes in the Socio Vivienda district of the city were targeted by at least 20 armed gangsters, resulting in the deaths of nearky two dozen people. 

Soldiers detain a man during an operation in the neighborhood where 22 people were killed on the eve in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on March 7, 2025

Rival factions of an Ecuadoran drug trafficking gang fought Thursday in the violent port city of Guayaquil

Soldiers stand guard during an operation in the neighborhood where ther violence occurred 

Images and videos posted on social media showed several heavily armed men running around the district during the violent attack.

Emergency workers were also seen tending to injured people, as scores of government security forces were deployed to the area.

The government in recent weeks has doubled down on its response in Ecuador’s most violent regions, as part of President Daniel Noboa’s war on drug-trafficking gangs.

Los Tiguerones and other gangs are considered terrorist groups by the government.

Noboa, who is seeking re-election in an April runoff vote, has said military and police officers will be allowed to respond to the Guayaquil violence without fear of being punished for acting with a heavy hand.

‘Defend the country, I will defend you,’ he wrote on X.

Following Thursday’s bloodshed, the president announced a preemptive amnesty for security forces fighting drug cartels in the violence-wracked city. 

Ecuador’s president Dnaiel Noboa is committed to fighting the war on drugs in the Latin American nation 

Ecuador’s National Police presents individuals detained during a police operation following gang clashes yesterday in Guayaquil 

Ecuador’s National Police displays drugs and ammunition seized during a police operation following gang clashes that resulted in multiple victims in Guayaquil 

People walk past a house with graffiti reading “Tiger Zone,” referring to the gang that controls the sector, known as ‘Los Tiguerones,’ in the neighborhood where at least 22 people were killed yesterday in Guayaquil 

Police officers stand guard during an operation in the neighborhood where at least 22 people were killed on the eve in Guayaquil

Women stand on a sidewalk close to a massacre site in Guayaquil

eople look at the body of a woman found in the neighborhood where at least 22 people were killed on the eve in Guayaquil

He has campaigned on his crackdown on drug cartels that have turned what was once one of Latin America’s most peaceful countries into one of its most violent.

Noboa’s leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez has criticized human rights abuses allegedly committed by the security forces in the name of the war on cartels and vowed a more humane approach.

Over a dozen members of the military are being investigated over the murder of four boys who went missing while playing football in Guayaquil in December.

Their charred bodies were later found near an army base in a case that caused widespread outrage.

Ecuador has been plunged into violence by the spread of transnational cartels that use its ports, like Guayaquil, to ship cocaine to the United States and Europe.

Homicides rose from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 47 in 2023.

With the violence showing no sign of abating, Noboa’s strategy on the campaign trail has been to toughen rather than soften his rhetoric.

He recently said he would ask unspecified allied countries to send special forces to help him fight criminal gangs.

Guayaquil is the capital of Guayas, one of seven provinces where a state of emergency has been in force for the past two months.