Online Desk: Ten people were killed and ten injured, including children, in two shootings Sunday in Guayaquil, the Ecuadoran port city in the grips of a bloody war between drug trafficking gangs, officials said. The shootings took place in two poor neighborhoods of the city that has seen at least three similar attacks since April. The first shooting killed four people and injured 10 — including children aged 2, 13 and 14 — in Siete Lagos in the south of the city, the prosecutor’s office said on Monday, AFP reports.

The second occurred in the north of Guayaquil, where six people were killed. Such attacks have become more frequent in Ecuador, especially in Guayaquil, as rival gangs ramp up the fight for drug markets and routes. Home to three million of Ecuador’s 18 million people, the port city has become a launch point for shipments of drugs to the United States and Europe.

Ecuador is located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s top producers of cocaine. The country also, conveniently for cartels, uses the US dollar as its currency.

More than 420 prisoners have died in vicious fighting between criminal groups in Ecuadoran prisons since February 2021, many beheaded or burned alive.