Ecuadoran police said on Sunday that five human heads were found hung on display at a tourist beach in Puerto Lopez, underscoring the country’s worsening gang violence, after images circulated on social media showing the heads tied with ropes to wooden posts alongside a board threatening criminal groups involved in extortion known locally as “vaccine cards,” which read: “The town belongs to us. Keep robbing fishermen and demanding vaccine cards, we already have you identified.”
President Daniel Noboa has launched a militarised campaign against gangs, but authorities say two years of security operations have failed to curb bloodshed in Ecuador, a major drug-trafficking hub between Peru and Colombia, which ended 2025 with a record homicide rate of 52 per 100,000 people, according to the Organized Crime Observatory, following deadly clashes between rival gangs that killed at least nine people, including a baby, at the same beach in December.