Seven killed in latest Ecuador pool hall shooting

Gunmen shot dead at least seven people at a pool hall in the Ecuadoran city of Santo Domingo, police said Sunday, in the country’s latest gruesome massacre amid soaring gang violence.

“Seven people died from gunshot wounds” at a pool hall in the nightlife district of Santo Domingo, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of the capital Quito, national police said in a WhatsApp group with reporters.

Purported security camera footage of the massacre circulating online showed several attackers wearing black masks open fire on two men standing at the entrance to the pool hall, sending pedestrians scrambling away.

The gunmen then entered the hall and continued shooting, fleeing before a police vehicle approached.

AFP has not yet independently verified the footage.

A similar pool hall massacre took place last month in the southwestern tourist city of General Villamil Playas, leaving at least nine dead.

Once considered a bastion of peace in Latin America, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.

Drug trafficking organizations have been multiplying in Ecuador, where the homicide rate rose from six per 100,000 residents in 2018 to 38 per 100,000 in 2024.