At Least 16 Killed in Two Attacks in Northern Honduras

Two attacks in northern Honduras killed at least 16 people Thursday, authorities said.

Gunfire first erupted on a remote palm farm in Rigores, in the municipality of Trujillo in the country’s north.

National Police spokesperson Edgardo Barahona said as many as 10 workers were shot dead at the site, though the death toll is expected to rise.

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

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

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

No motive has been identified in the attack, but 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, the head of Honduras’s Joint Staff of the Armed Forces, Hector Benjamin Valerio Ardon, issued a statement saying the armed forces would offer “all necessary logistics” and “all its personnel” to find those responsible.

Separately Thursday, a second deadly incident unfolded in the Cortes department, near the border with Guatemala.

Police officers had traveled from the capital Tegucigalpa to Omoa to carry out an anti-gang operation.

Authorities described what happened next as an ambush. Officers entered a building to search for suspects and were fired upon, according to reports.

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). Suspects may have also been killed or injured.

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,” the statement added.

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

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

But the emergency decree ended in January with the inauguration of right-wing President Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has prioritized a hardline approach to security in Latin America.

In March, Asfura participated in Trump’s right-wing “Shield of the Americas” conference in Florida, a gathering to discuss regional security.