Guatemalan lawmaker, three police officers killed in eastern drug-trafficking region

Gunmen killed Guatemalan Congressman Julio Portillo and three National Civil Police officers in an armed attack Friday in Rio Hondo, a town in the eastern department of Zacapa. Portillo was taken to a hospital with serious injuries and later died, his party, the National Unity of Hope, confirmed. Guatemala's Congress mourned his death in a post on X late Friday, calling it a tragic passing and naming him as Zacapa's representative.

President Bernardo Arevalo said the three officers died in the line of duty and ordered security forces to work with prosecutors investigating the killings. Authorities have not said what motivated the attack and have not identified who carried it out.

Portillo won his seat in 2023 for the opposition party Cabal, but later switched to the National Unity of Hope, or UNE, which is led by former First Lady Sandra Torres. Torres is expected to run for president in Guatemala's elections next year, putting her party in the middle of a case with national political weight.

Zacapa is known as a drug trafficking corridor. The Lorenzana family cartel controls the drug trade there and has links to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, according to authorities' account of the region.

The attack lands about three weeks after former anticorruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Solorzano Foppa was shot dead in Guatemala City. That killing sharpened fears about organized crime's reach into Guatemalan institutions and raised the prospect that politically motivated assassinations are returning. Authorities have not established any connection between the two attacks.