Thousands of Ecuadorians flee their homes as gang violence worsens

For one grandmother, it was when bullets began hitting ⁠the rooftops of her neighbourhood that she decided she would have to leave the housing development ⁠where she had lived for nearly 20 years.

A sharp rise in fighting between gang factions in Ecuador has prompted thousands of families to flee and abandon their homes to the gangs, who strip the houses for drug money or use them to hide kidnapping victims, according to residents and police.

One of the areas that has been the site of the heaviest bloodshed is the Nueva Prosperina district in the coastal city of Guayaquil, where fighting between factions of the Los Tiguerones gang last year killed 22 people. Among those who fled was a 66-year-old woman, who, like other residents of the district Reuters spoke to for ‌this story, asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals from the gangs.

Armed groups were targeting people indiscriminately, assuming that anyone entering the neighbourhood belonged to a different gang, she said. She worried that if she had stayed, her daughter, who commutes to work on a motorcycle, could be killed or her teenage grandson recruited.