Dozens of inmates die in latest prison riot in Ecuador
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3 min read . Updated: 14 Nov 2021, 08:50 PM IST - Violence erupts at the Litoral prison complex in the second gang battle there in six weeks
At least 68 inmates were killed and 25 injured at a prison in Ecuador’s coastal city of Guayaquil, the attorney general’s office said Saturday, as President Guillermo Lasso’s government grappled with growing violence.
The latest bloodshed began Friday evening at the notorious Litoral prison, where officials described a “complete massacre" in which imprisoned gang members broke down walls and burned mattresses to smoke out inmates in a rival pavilion, and then attacked them with knives.
“It’s a situation of extreme savagery," said Pablo Arosemena, the governor of Guayas, where Guayaquil is located. “We feel deep sorrow for the loss of human life."
About 300 inmates have been killed in prison riots in Ecuador so far in 2021, a surge in killings that security experts call the bloodiest year on record in the country’s penitentiary system. In September, 119 inmates were killed at the Litoral prison, where gangs involved in drug trafficking battle for control.
“We are fighting against drug trafficking, against gangs that fight each other to control territory inside and outside the prison," Mr. Arosemena said at a press conference.
Videos circulating on social media and on WhatsApp showed inmates stabbing rivals with large knives and bodies burning. Another video showed inmates pleading for the police to intervene, with explosions heard in the background and blood on the prison floor. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t independently verify the videos.
On Saturday, relatives of inmates gathering outside the prison were desperate for news of their loved ones. One woman yelled out in tears and hugged her sister after seeing a picture on her cellphone of her slain son. Signs outside the prison urged the government to protect the inmates.
Amada Morán, 57 years old, arrived early Saturday for news about her son, who was locked up in the pavilion that was attacked. She last heard from him a couple of hours before the violence began on Friday, when he wrote to her to say that he wasn’t getting anything to eat.
“I haven’t heard anything about him," said Ms. Morán.
Officials said Friday’s violence occurred days after a gang leader was released from prison, leaving that pavilion leaderless as rival gangs carried out an attack that dragged on for nearly eight hours.
President Lasso took office earlier this year and declared a state of emergency, sending soldiers into the streets as his government struggled with rising crime. He expressed his condolences for the families of the slain inmates.
“This is a call to attention to the institutions of the Ecuadorean state," he wrote on Twitter. “We need suitable constitutional tools to protect the population, recover order in the prisons and fight mafias that profit from the chaos."
Soldiers stationed outside the Litoral prison were unable to respond when the attacks began Friday because courts have barred the armed forces from going inside prisons, said Ecuador’s police commander, Tanya Varela. She said a police drone saw inmates roaming the prison with knives and guns before a police squad entered to provide protection to inmates under attack.
The Litoral prison has 80 guards overseeing some 8,000 inmates.
“The state is looking on in a daze, unable to do anything as inmates kill each other," said Daniel Pontón, a security expert. “There is an incapacity to control the prisons."
Latin America’s notoriously crowded prisons are hotbeds for deadly riots and bloody fights between gangs. Gangs in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil often battle for control inside prisons, which law-enforcement officials say are used as a headquarters from which they orchestrate drug trafficking and other criminal activities on the outside.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
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