QUITO (AFP) – The mayor of a small mining town in Ecuador was shot dead on Wednesday, just days before a national referendum on whether to take tougher measures against crime, authorities said.
Mayor Jose Sanchez of Camilo Ponce Enriquez canton in the southern province of Azuay, “was shot and killed”, the mayor’s office announced on its Facebook page.
Sanchez, 52, was exercising at night accompanied by his bodyguards when gunmen opened fire, according to a police post published on X.
He is the fourth Ecuadoran mayor to be assassinated in a year, and the second in less than a month.
In March, the mayor of coastal San Vicente was found shot to death along with the municipality’s communications director Jairo Loor.
Millions of Ecuadorans cast ballots in a referendum last Sunday to decide whether or not to greenlight stricter measures against organised crime in a country gripped by bloody gang wars.
Expressing solidarity with the slain mayor’s family and friends on X, the interior ministry said: “This tragic event reinforces our tireless commitment to combat serious criminal acts.”
Once a bastion of peace situated between major cocaine producers, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by the transnational cartels that use its ports to ship the drug to the United States and Europe.
Prosecutors, journalists and police are also among the victims of organised crime linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels.
In January, President Daniel Noboa declared that Ecuador was in a state of “internal armed conflict” against around 20 criminal groups.
That came after a spasm of violence sparked by the prison escape of a major druglord, who has yet to be recaptured.
