At least 12 inmates were killed in clashes that broke out in a prison in the Ecuadoran port of Guayaquil, the country’s prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
The incident is the latest deadly violence to rock the city’s penitentiary system.
The dozen inmate deaths occurred after a bloody confrontation erupted on Friday, part of a spate of brutality that began when six detainees were found hanged in the same prison and three female guards were killed earlier in the week.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Ecuadoran prisons are the scene of recurrent massacres between prisoners, against a backdrop of rivalry between criminal groups fighting for control of lucrative drug trafficking operations.
“An investigation has been opened to identify those responsible for the death of 12 inmates from the Litoral Penitentiary,” the prosecutor’s office said, adding that the bodies had bullet wounds.
The country’s main port on the Pacific coast, Guayaquil has in recent years become the epicenter of drug trafficking in Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s main cocaine producers.
Since February 2021, eight massacres have been recorded in these prisons, with more than 400 prisoners killed, most of them dismembered and burned.
After the six hanged inmates were found on Wednesday, three female guards were shot dead on Thursday by hired killers at a restaurant outside the prison complex.
Reporters on Friday could hear gunfire from within the prison and were able to record aerial images in which five bodies could be seen lying on the ground.
“We do not deny the reality and the fact that we are in the worst moment of violence in the country,” Ecuadoran Minister of Defense Juan Zapata said on Friday.
Police and the army by Saturday morning regained control of the prison, which houses about 6,800 inmates and is part of a large prison complex.
Drug traffickers use prisons as centers of operation, leading to deadly clashes at regular intervals. About 120 prisoners in September were killed in the Litoral Penitentiary during the deadliest massacre in the history of the country, and one of the bloodiest in Latin America. Drug-related violence is endemic in Ecuador.
About 30 armed men on Tuesday opened fire in the small fishing port of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border, killing nine people. The assailants arrived by boat and car and, without a word, began shooting.
“What happened in Esmeraldas were not acts of common crime, they were terrorist acts,” Zapata said.
Faced with the onslaught of violence, Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso declared a 60-day state of emergency on March 3 in three provinces, including Guayaquil and Esmeraldas.
Ecuador has about 31,000 prisoners in 36 prisons with a capacity of 30,000 people, census data last year showed.
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