GUAYAQUIL-At least 12 inmates were killed in clashes that broke out in a prison in the Ecuadoran port of Guayaquil, the prosecutor’s office said Sunday, the latest deadly violence to rock the city’s penitentiary system.
The dozen inmate deaths occurred after a bloody confrontation erupted Friday -- part of a spate of brutality that began when six detainees were found hanged in the same prison and three female guards were killed earlier in the week.
Ecuadoran prisons are the scene of recurrent massacres between prisoners, against a backdrop of rivalry between criminal groups fighting for control of lucrative drug trafficking.
“An investigation has been opened to identify those responsible for the death of 12 inmates from the Litoral Penitentiary,” which is also known as Guayas 1, the prosecutor’s office said, adding that the bodies had bullet wounds. The country’s main port on the Pacific coast, Guayaquil has in recent years become the epicenter of drug trafficking in Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru -- the world’s main cocaine producers.
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Since February 2021, eight massacres have been recorded in these prisons, with more than 400 prisoners killed, most of them dismembered and burned.