Rival factions of an Ecuadoran drug trafficking gang fought Thursday in the violent port city of Guayaquil, leaving at least 22 people dead, officials said.

Another three people were wounded in a series of clashes in the city, the local police said in a statement as it increased an earlier toll of 12 dead.

A police source told AFP the gunfights involved opposing factions of a gang called Los Tigerones, one of the most powerful in this formerly peaceful country.

Ecuador is home to an estimated 20 criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, wreaking havoc in a country of 18 million squeezed between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.

In recent years, Ecuador has plunged into violence amid the rapid spread of transnational cartels that use its ports, like Guayaquil, to ship cocaine to the United States and Europe.

Homicides, for example, have risen from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 47 in 2023.

Experts say the gangs are constantly mutating and growing stronger with profits from crime.

Guayaquil is the capital of Guayas, one of seven provinces where a state of emergency has been in force for the past two months as the government battles the gangsters. In February, clashes between rival criminal groups in Guayaquil claimed the lives of 14 people.

Last month President Daniel Noboa said he would ask unspecified allied countries to send special forces to help him wage this fight.

The violence is not letting up as Ecuador gears for a runoff election April 13 in which Noboa will face leftist Luisa Gonzalez.

In January, the military said a leader of one of Ecuador’s biggest crime syndicates, Los Lobos, was arrested at his home in the coastal city of Portoviejo. The U.S. last year declared Los Lobos to be the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador.

 In 2024, Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict” after a brutal wave of violence, sparked by the jailbreak of a powerful crime boss.