At least 12 inmates were killed in an Ecuadorian jail amid a new clash between gangs, the SNAI prison agency said on Saturday, in the latest chapter in the South American nation’s prison violence.
The confrontation occurred on Friday in the prison known as La Penitenciaría, in the city of Guayaquil, one of the country’s most dangerous.
Ecuador has been plagued by prison riots since 2021, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of inmates, which the government attributes to clashes between drug gangs fighting for territory and control.
“Through the use of technology, it was established 12 people died,” SNAI told reporters.
The entity added that the prosecutor’s office and the police are in the prison for the identification of the dead bodies.
Last year, a United Nations delegation found that the violence in Ecuador’s prisons was caused by years of state neglect of the penitentiary system.
President Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker facing impeachment hearings on corruption charges he denies, has struggled to address the growing violence in Ecuador, a country used as a transit point for cocaine moving to Europe and the United States.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/gang-clash-leaves-least-12-dead-ecuador-prison-2023-04-15/