Gunmen kill 25 in Honduras attacks on north coast plantation, police

Gunmen killed at least 25 people in two attacks on Honduras’ north coast, including six police officers ambushed while heading to Omoa, in a burst of violence that underscored how fragile state control remains in one of the country’s most contested regions.

The deadliest assault hit a plantation in the municipality of Trujillo, where authorities said at least 19 workers were shot and killed. Public Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson Yuri Mora said the toll was difficult to fix immediately because relatives removed bodies from the scene. The killings came in an area long shaped by land disputes, palm oil interests and organized crime, where rival gangs are fighting for control of plantations and the routes that run through them.

The second attack targeted police traveling toward Omoa in the Cortes department near the Guatemalan border. National Police spokesperson Edgardo Barahona said six officers, including a senior officer, were killed in the ambush. The officers were part of an anti-gang mission, a reminder that Honduras’ security forces remain vulnerable even when operating under a direct crime-fighting mandate.

The twin attacks cut through a region that has spent decades under pressure from overlapping forms of violence, from agrarian conflict to drug-trafficking networks. The Bajo Aguán and Colón coastal corridor has long been a flashpoint where peasant organizations, palm oil interests, traffickers and security forces have clashed over land and local power. The killing of environmental leader Juan López in Tocoa on Sept. 14, 2024, became another marker of that danger. As of April 29, 2025, Amnesty International said three suspects were in custody in that case, but those who ordered the killing had not been punished.

The violence also lands in a country where homicide rates have fallen since their 2011 peak, yet gangs and trafficking routes still shape daily life. Global Witness said Honduras had the highest per-capita number of killings of land and environmental defenders in 2023, with 18 defenders killed, and later reported five such killings in 2024. Amnesty International has called Honduras one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental defenders.

For Washington and other capitals watching migration and security along the Central American corridor, the attacks are another sign that rural violence in Honduras is not separate from regional crime. When gangs can contest plantations, ambush police and intimidate defenders in the same zone, the state’s weakness echoes far beyond the north coast.