At least 12 inmates killed in fresh Ecuador prison clashes

‘An investigation has been opened to identify those responsible for the death of 12 inmates from the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil,’ the prosecutor’s office said

Six detainees were found hanged on Wednesday in the prison. The next day, three prison guards were killed in the city. On Friday, three prisoners were injured

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Relatives of inmates await information outside the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil, Ecuador on Saturday after clashes broke out on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 5:38am, 16 Apr 2023

At least 12 inmates were killed in fresh clashes that broke out in a prison in the Ecuadorean port of Guayaquil, the prosecutor’s office said on Saturday, the latest deadly violence to rock the city’s jails.

“An investigation has been opened to identify those responsible for the death of 12 inmates from the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil,” the prosecutor’s office said on Twitter, one day after the clashes broke out.

Six detainees were found hanged on Wednesday in the same prison in Guayaquil, a large port city in southwestern Ecuador plagued by violence linked to drug trafficking.

The next day, three prison guards were killed while they were outside the prison complex in the city. And on Friday, at least three prisoners were injured in gun battles in the same jail.

Ecuadorean prisons are the scene of recurrent massacres between prisoners, against a backdrop of rivalry between criminal groups fighting for control of lucrative drug trafficking.

Since February 2021, eight massacres have been recorded in these prisons, with more than 400 prisoners killed, most of them dismembered and burned.

The country’s main port on the Pacific coast, Guayaquil has in recent years become the epicentre of drug trafficking in Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru - the world’s main cocaine producers.