Ecuador jail fight: Dozens of inmates killed in gang war
- Published
At least 75 inmates have been killed in simultaneous fights in three jails in Ecuador, one of the deadliest incidents in the country's prisons in years.
The military and riot police have been deployed in an effort to quell the violence which started on Tuesday.
Experts say the fights were prompted by a battle for control of the jails after a gang leader was killed in December.
The three jails hold 70% of the country's prisoners, according to the head of the Ecuadorean prison system.
Edmundo Moncayo said 33 prisoners had been killed in a jail in Cuenca, 21 in Guayaquil and 8 in Latacunga by Tuesday evening. Officials later confirmed the deaths of 13 others prisoners without specifying in which jails they had occurred.
There are reports of a number of police officers injured but all of those killed are thought to be inmates.
President Lenín Moreno said reinforcements had been sent to all three prisons to re-establish control.
The first reports of fights came in at about 09:00 local time (15:00 GMT) on Tuesday. Seven hours later, the government said security forces had re-established order in the Guayaquil prison but it was not clear what the situation was in the other two penitentiaries.
Mr Moncayo said tension had been running high in the prisons since the killing in December of Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias Itch.
Zambrano, the leader of the Choneros gang, was shot dead in a cafeteria just months after being released from jail.
During his time in prison, he and his gang ran a lucrative smuggling, drug dealing and extortion ring which mainly - but not exclusively - operates inside the country's jails.
Tuesday's deadly fights are thought to have been over who should replace Zambrano and were said to have been planned and highly organised, according to Interior Minister Patricio Pazmiño.
Over the past two years, the government has twice declared emergency measures in Ecuador's jails - in May 2019 when 10 inmates were killed within weeks and in August 2020 when a key witness in a corruption case was murdered inside his cell.