AT least eight people have been killed and three others injured after gunmen opened fire inside a nightclub in Ecuador.

Armed thugs on motorbikes arrived after midnight and began shooting people drinking outside the nightclub in Santa Lucia.

Law enforcement arrived on the scene following an emergency call.

They found “several people wounded and seven bodies,” police colonel Javier Chango said.

Among the dead was the nightclub owner Jorge Urquizo, who was the brother of Santa Lucia’s mayor.

Police found 800 cartridge cases at the scene.

After the attack, the gunmen fled along an “unknown route,” Chango said.

The local police picked up a man driving a truck who was carrying a revolver, but were not able to determine whether he was involved in the attack.

The police said they have yet to work out a motive for the shooting.

Ecuador, once a peaceful haven between the world’s two top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt in recent years as gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

More than 70 percent of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data.