At least 24 detainees have been killed and more than 40 others injured in clashes between gunmen and detainees in a jail in the southwestern part of Ecuador, local authorities said on Tuesday.
Clashes have killed at least 24 people and injured 42 others, the governor of the coastal province of Guayaquil (whose capital is Guayaquil, where the prison is located) said on Twitter, citing police officer Fausto Buenano.
Ecuador’s prisons have been turned into a theater of recurring violence for months between rival gangs vying for control of drug trafficking, according to authorities.
In February, simultaneous clashes between gangs at the stake of control of the largest penitentiaries in the Andean country put the death toll at 79 prisoners in one day. Those episodes were marked by horrific scenes, with corpses being beheaded.
According to the Ombudsman, an independent public authority responsible for the defense of human rights, in 2020 “103 murders” were committed in the prisons of Ecuador. Between January and August 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (ECHR) reported 121 deaths already in Latin American state prisons.
In mid-September, a prison in the same province of Waia was attacked by small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The incident did not cause any casualties, however the roof of the prison was damaged; the authorities spoke of a “very serious” action, a new episode of the “war between international drug cartels”, according to them.
The prisons in Ecuador have an acute problem with an excessive number of inmates: they hold around 39,000 people, while their nominal capacity does not exceed 30,000 places.
Following riots in July that killed 27 detainees (24483518), the government replaced the directors of 65 prisons in the country and declared a state of emergency in the penitentiary system.
He also announced an increase in the number of places in prisons, as part of a plan to restructure the “precarious” and “chaotic” system of penitentiaries.
