One attack involved a police raid, while the other took place on a palm farm, killing rural labourers. Published On 21 May 202621 May 2026Two 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.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listA 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. Advertisement 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 r …
