New riot leaves five dead in state jail

An armed confrontation between inmates at a penitentiary in Ecuador left five inmates dead, two days after another riot that killed 16 prisoners, it was reported Thursday.

The incident occurred in the Litoral penitentiary, in the port city of Guayaquil, reported the National Service for Persons Deprived of Liberty.

He added that the confrontations with bullets and knives left 18 inmates wounded, in addition to five policemen, one of them shot in the head. The dispute began on Wednesday afternoon but the police forces must progressively enter the different pavilions where they discover the victims.

He added that the uniformed men remain inside that prison center to regain control of the facilities.

On Wednesday afternoon, videos circulated on social networks in which gunshots, explosions and smoke can be seen coming out of that prison, one of the most violent and dangerous in Ecuador, where the massacre of 125 prisoners was recorded in September last year. the largest recorded in this country.

According to the authorities, the disputes are over the control of routes and territories for the distribution of drugs at a national and international level. On the outskirts of that compound, dozens of relatives gathered who shouted for information from their relatives and even attacked the police with stones, who defended themselves with pepper spray.

The incident occurs two days after another prison riot in the Andean city of Latacunga in which 16 prisoners died and 43 were injured.

For a couple of years, Ecuador’s state prisons have become the scene of bloody clashes between rival groups of prisoners, some of them linked to Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.

According to figures from the Service for the Attention of Persons Deprived of Liberty, last year 316 inmates were killed by their colleagues, while so far this year there have been 106 fatalities.

Ecuador’s prison system is designed for about 30,000 people, but as of last month there were some 35,000 inmates in the country’s 53 state prisons.

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