Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has granted preemptive pardons for police and military personnel responding to an armed attack that killed at least 22 in the southern city of Guayaquil yesterday.

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.

Relatives of those killed in an attack on Thursday in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil waited outside a morgue to retrieve their bodies.

Gangs, drugs and public safety threats are ravaging Ecuador’s largest city and may push the president to seek help from the United States.

The government of President Daniel Noboa, who is running for reelection in an April run-off, has intensified security operations over the past several weeks in the country’ most violent areas as part of a war on drug gangs declared by Noboa.

Five inmates were found dead Friday at Ecuador's biggest prison, the SNAI prison agency said, a day after fatal clashes between rival gangs erupted in the same port city of Guayaquil.

Ecuador's president announced on Friday an amnesty for security forces fighting drug cartels in the port city of Guayaquil, where 22 people were killed in fierce gunfights between rival gangs.

Fighting between rival factions of an Ecuadoran drug trafficking gang left at least 22 people dead in the port city of Guayaquil on Thursday