Four trucks, a car and two motorbikes fell into the Magro river some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the port of Guayaquil when the bridge collapsed on Wednesday.

Footage of the aftermath showed a truck teetering over a guardrail at the edge of the bridge, meters from a river submerging the structure.

"The bodies of four missing people have been found," the National Secretariat of Risk Management posted on X.

Rescuers were searching for one person still missing, it added.

The bridge connected the province of Guayas, where Guayaquil is situated, with other provinces in the north.

Guayas governor Marcela Aguinaga said she had received no reports of it being faulty.

"From what we can deduce at this point, the bridge was overloaded," she added on social network X.

The bridge's collapse comes in the middle of the rainy season in the Andean nation.

At least 20 people have been killed in flooding and landslides that have damaged 45 bridges, according to the risk management ministry.