A TEENAGE boy who was shot dead last night in Isla Cristina had no apparent links to the suspected narco feud behind it.
Two hooded gunmen riding a motorbike opened fire on a group standing in Calle Valverde del Camino, in the town’s Rocio neighbourhood, at around 10pm on Sunday, before fleeing the scene.
The horrifying aftermath saw an eight-months-pregnant woman, 39, her mother-in-law, 62, killed on the spot, while an 18-year-old man — a nephew of the family, according to Guardia Civil — was left fighting for life after taking refuge inside a nearby house.
A second person suffered a leg wound, apparently from a ricocheting bullet, and is out of danger, Isla Cristina’s mayor, Jenaro Orta reported.
READ MORE: Killers in Huelva massacre torch motorbike as narco fear grips once-sleepy coastal community
The pregnant woman’s unborn baby also died in the attack.
But while the hitmen were believed to be targeting the family of a jailed drug trafficker man known as ‘El Baba’, the 16-year-old boy had nothing to do with them or the feud that triggered it.
Sources close to the case told local daily Huelva Informacion that the teenager, unlike the other victims, had simply been passing through the neighbourhood when the shooting began and had no family connection to those targeted.
Investigators believe the attack is linked to a feud between rival clans, with Spanish media reporting suspected links to drug trafficking in the area, though Guardia Civil say no theory has been ruled out.
‘El Baba’ is suspected of shooting his own brother-in-law dead during a dispute between two families in the El Torrejon neighbourhood of Huelva city, the provincial capital, in September 2024, an attack that also left another man injured.
He fled the scene but was later arrested in Gijon, northern Spain, and remanded in custody without bail on charges of murder and attempted murder.
Guardia Civil arrested three more people in Isla Cristina in May 2025 over threats and gunshots fired from rooftops linked to the feud, and gunmen shot dead ‘El Baba’s stepfather and wounded his daughter at a house in the town the following month.
Orta said Sunday’s gunmen later set fire to their motorbike in pine woods near the town in an apparent attempt to throw investigators off their trail, telling Canal Sur radio: “They wanted to distract us.”
Orta, who described the scene of the killings as ‘dantesque’, said there had been ‘an enormous number of shell casings’ around the bodies, and condemned as being in ‘very poor taste’ graphic images of the victims that circulated on social media afterwards.
“I hope things return to normal,” Orta said.
Isla Cristina is a fishing town and beach resort on Huelva’s Costa de la Luz, close to the Portuguese border.
The area has been subsumed by drug trafficking in recent years, after successful police action pushed the criminal groups around La Linea de la Concepcion and Cadiz further north towards the Portugal border.
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