SAN SALVADOR – A man suspected of being a drug trafficker and informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and two men accompanying him were gunned down by unidentified individuals, El Salvador’s National Civilian Police, or PNC, said Sunday.

Edwin Reynaldo Argueta was pulled out of a local nightspot where he and four friends – two of whom were also murdered – were enjoying themselves, a PNC spokesman said.

All the victims had gunshot wounds, the police spokesman said, adding that the other two men who had been with Argueta survived the attack.

The spokesman said that the case had been handed over to the Homicide Investigation Division.

The gunmen who killed the 37-year-old Argueta are linked to the Coyote cartel, which operates out of Guatemala and has connections with a Salvadoran gang known as “Los Perrones,” La Prensa Grafica newspaper reported.

Media reports Sunday said that a group of armed men forced Argueta and his companions out of the bar, apparently with the collaboration of five bar employees, who were later arrested.

The authorities were alerted to the killings by a person who managed to escape unharmed.

Argueta’s body was found Saturday along with those of the two other victims.

Argueta had been accused of trafficking in migrants and drugs after two kilograms of cocaine were found in his home, but he was provisionally cleared of the second charge due to a “weak prosecutorial accusation,” La Prense Grafica said.

Later, apparently he became an informant for the DEA.

The press reported that the information provided by Argueta, who last March survived an attack on his life staged at the door of his house, had aided the investigations of a series of drug trafficking cases around the country.