By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Barely 24 hours to the general elections, mayor of an Ecuadorian city on Saturday said he was a victim of an attempted Assassination.
He escaped unharmed from the Friday evening attack, in which gunmen fired 30 shots at his vehicle, Francisco Tamariz, the mayor of the coastal town of La Libertad narrated.
“They tried to kill me,” Tamariz said on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that more than eight people had witnessed the shooting.
Ecuador will hold a presidential election Sunday after a campaign.
It marked by the murder of a top presidential candidate who vowed 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 increased, above that of Mexico and Colombia, and the assassination of several politicians in the run-up to the vote seems to be a sign of the challenges facing Ecuador’s leaders.
The most high-profile among them was presidential candidate and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio, who was gunned down in broad daylight after he left a political rally weeks to election.
