NICOSIA (AFP) - Two Cypriots were gunned down outside a luxury hotel in Limassol yesterday, in an attack which police said had the hallmarks of a gang hit.

“At the time the [victims] approached the hotel’s exit gate, which was closed, it appears that somebody ambushed them and shot them,” police chief Haralambos Koulentis told reporters.

Cleon Papadopoulos, 34, and Constantinos Leventopoulos, 24, were killed in a hail of bullets as their car was ambushed at the exit gate of Limassol’s Le Meridien hotel at around 1 p.m. Detectives said that 24 9-millimeter shell casings were collected from the scene.

One of the victims had been the target of a previous assassination attempt, police said, adding that they suspected the killings were connected to a turf war in the illicit drugs trade.