MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ecuador prison violence: 12 inmates killed in gunfight

“We are in the worst moment of the violence crisis in the country,” Zapata said

A new episode of violence has left at least another 12 inmates dead after gunfights at the Guayaquil El Litoral jailhouse, it was reported Saturday. It was the second massacre within the same week at that infamous prison involving rival gangs clashing over drug trafficking territorial control.

According to Ecuador's Attorney General's Office, the killings took place “on Friday afternoon.” The police and military retook control of the prison later in the day.

”The bodies present bullet impacts. Meanwhile, three other PPL (inmates) were wounded and were taken to various medical centers in Guayaquil,“ the authorities added on Twitter.

Ecuador's Prisons Bureau known as SNAI said the fighting involved inmates from four of the twelve wards that make up the penitentiary.

”We are in the worst moment of the violence crisis in the country,“ Defense Minister Juan Zapata said in a TV interview. Ecuador has ”more than 13 Organized Crime Groups (GDO)” linked to Mexican cartels such as the Sinaloa cartel, he added.

Confrontations among drug traffickers have left more than 420 prisoners dead since 2021. In September of that year, some 120 prisoners were killed in Guayas 1 (another name for El Litoral), in the largest prison massacre in Ecuador and one of the bloodiest in Latin America.

In Guayquil, homicides, shootings, bombings, extortions, kidnappings, and violent crimes are on the rise.

Last Wednesday, authorities had found six inmates hanged in their cells at El Litoral, and a day later three prison guards were killed by hitmen in a nearby restaurant.

A committee of inmates' relatives said on Twitter on Friday that “for weeks there have been warnings of a new massacre” in Guayas 1. The prisoners' relatives called on the authorities to “act to prevent more deaths.

Amid spiraling violence in Ecuador, on Tuesday some thirty gunmen opened fire on the population in an artisanal fishing port and killed nine people in the northern town of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border.

”What happened in Esmeraldas are no longer acts of common crime, they are already acts of terrorism,” Zapata said.

The government of right-wing President Guillermo Lasso is waging a war against organized crime and drug trafficking, having seized more than 450 tons of drugs, mainly cocaine, since taking office in May 2021.

Faced with the high level of insecurity in the country, Lasso has decreed constant states of exception, with curfews and deployment of the military to the streets. Currently, three coastal provinces and three cities, including Guayaquil, are under such a state.

The last clash between prisoner gangs in Guayaquil had been on April 5 at the La Roca prison, resulting in three dead and one wounded. This penitentiary is part of the same complex where Friday's massacre occurred.

Ecuador has about 31,000 inmates in 36 prisons with a capacity for 30,000 people.