QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Five human heads were found hanging from ropes on a beach in southwestern Ecuador, police said on Sunday, as the country reels from a wave of violence related to drug trafficking.

Images published by Ecuadorian media outlets showed the bloody scene. Next to the heads was a warning sign directed at alleged extortionists of fishermen in the small fishing port of Puerto Lopez. The ropes were fixed to wooden poles on the beach.

A police report attributed the incident to a conflict between criminal groups.

Drug-trafficking networks with links to transnational cartels are active in the area and have used fishermen and their small boats for their illicit activities, according to authorities.

A dispute for territory and control of drug-trafficking routes has triggered violent episodes across the Manabi province, where Puerto Lopez is located.

Police on Saturday said that they had carried out control and surveillance operations in Puerto Lopez amid an ongoing state of emergency enforced in nine of the Andean country’s 24 provinces, including Manabi.

The state of emergency seeks to contain the spiral of violence, especially in coastal areas, and restricts certain civil rights.

Police controls in Puerto Lopez increased after a massacre left six people dead two weeks ago. A second armed attack three days later left the same number of dead in Manta, also in the province of Manabi.

Ecuador has been engulfed in a wave of violence for more than four years after becoming a logistical center for the storage and distribution of drugs that enter mainly through the northern border with Colombia and the southern border with Peru.

2025 was Ecuador’s most violent year on record, with more than 9,000 homicides according to official figures, surpassing the record set in 2023 with 8,248 deaths.