QUITO - A local politician in Ecuador was killed Monday night, party of­ficials said, less than a week after a presidential front-runner was gunned down at a campaign rally ahead of this weekend’s elections. Pedro Briones, a member of the Citizen Revolution Party of former president Rafael Correa, and one of the movement’s leaders in the province of Esmeraldas on the border with Colom­bia, was killed by unknown gunmen. “My solidarity with the family of comrade Pedro Briones, new victim of violence,” Luisa Gonza­lez, one of the main presi­dential candidates, said on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter. “Ecuador is going through its bloodiest period,” said Gonzalez, a close former as­sociate of Correa. She called the government inept and said the country has been taken over by organized crime gangs.