At least 16 people killed in two attacks in northern Honduras

Two incidents of gun violence have shaken Honduras, killing at least 16 people in the Central American country.

On Thursday, gunfire was first reported on a remote palm farm in Rigores, part of the municipality of Trujillo in the country’s north.

A spokesperson for Honduras’s National Police, Edgardo Barahona, said that as many as 10 workers were shot dead at the site, though the number is expected to rise.

Barahona explained that some distraught family members had come to collect their loved ones’ bodies before investigators could secure the crime scene.

Local media indicated that armed suspects fired indiscriminately on labourers, including some who had gathered at a local church.

Photos showed bodies, some wearing thick rubber boots for work, strewn on the ground outside. According to one report, three sisters were among the dead.

While no motive has been identified in the attack, northern Honduras has been the site of ongoing agrarian conflict for years.

Human rights experts warn that local farmers and workers have been forced off their land by armed actors seeking control of the fertile territory, resulting in sometimes deadly attacks.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the head of Honduras’s Joint Staff of the Armed Forces, Hector Benjamin Valerio Ardon, issued a statement that the armed forces would offer “all necessary logistics” and “all its personnel” to find those responsible.

Separately on Thursday, a second deadly incident unfolded in another part of northern Honduras, the Cortes department, near the border with Guatemala.

In that case, police officers had travelled from the capital Tegucigalpa to Omoa, in Cortes, to carry out an anti-gang operation.

But authorities describe what happened next as an ambush. According to reports, the officers entered a building to search for suspects and were fired upon.

Six officers were killed, including a deputy commissioner named Lester Amador, according to the National Police. They were from the Anti-Maras, Gangs and Organised Crime Police Directorate (DIPAMPCO), a unit within the police force. Suspects may have also been killed or injured in the attack.

After the two attacks, the National Police issued a statement, saying it “will proceed immediately with a direct intervention in the affected areas”.

“The state will act firmly to capture those responsible, protect vulnerable communities and guarantee comprehensive justice for all affected victims,” it added.

Honduras was under a years-long state of emergency to combat crime starting in 2022.

Critics, however, denounced the emergency measures as weakening civil liberties and awarding law enforcement inordinate power, allowing it to carry out human rights abuses.