Ecuador mayor survives assassination attempt ahead of elections

The mayor of an Ecuadoran city has said he was the victim of an attempted assassination, a day before the country goes to the polls in general elections.

Francisco Tamariz, the mayor of the coastal town of La Libertad, said on Saturday he escaped unharmed from the Friday evening attack, in which gunmen fired 30 shots at his vehicle.

"They tried to kill me," Tamariz said on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that several people had witnessed the shooting.

In a subsequent Facebook post, he said he was returning late Friday night from nearby Guayaquil when two gunmen stepped out of a police car and opened fire on his armoured van.

"In just seconds, they started to riddle the vehicle with bullets... without ever asking who was in it," he said in the Facebook post, appearing in a bulletproof vest alongside his wife, who was in the van with him at the time.

Ecuador will hold a presidential election on Sunday after a campaign marked by the murder of a top candidate and vows to tackle the lawlessness that has engulfed the country.

The small South American nation has, in recent years, become a playground for foreign drug mafias seeking to export cocaine from its shores, stirring up a brutal war between local gangs.

The murder rate has soared above those of Mexico and Colombia, and the assassination of several politicians in the run-up to the vote underscored the challenges facing Ecuador's leaders.

The most high-profile among them was presidential candidate and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio, gunned down in broad daylight as he left a political rally just days ahead of the vote.

Another shooting

And in another development, a rightist candidate for the presidency, Otto Sonnenholzner, said Saturday on X that he had witnessed a shooting, though it was unclear whether he was the intended victim.

"We were just subjected to a shooting near where I was having breakfast with my family" in Guayaquil, added Sonnenholzner, a former Ecuadoran vice president.

"Thank God we're all well, but we demand an investigation into what occurred."

A video on social media showed Sonnenholzner greeting a supporter in a sunny restaurant in Guayaquil and preparing to take a selfie, before shots sound outside.

The national police said in a press conference the shoot-out was the result of a chase after a robbery in an exercise clothing store and that five people have been arrested.

Sonnenholzner has hardened his discourse around crime since the murder of Villavicencio, repeatedly promising his supporters that should he be elected, police will shoot criminals who use violence against citizens.