A new scuffle in a prison in Ecuador leaves at least one prisoner dead and 11 injured

A new prison brawl in Ecuador occurred this Wednesday in the Litoral Penitentiary, the largest and most populated in the country, so far leaves one prisoner dead and eleven wounded, of them six inmates and five police officers, according to the National Penitentiary Service (SNAI), which is in charge of the prisons. The body was removed from pavilion 9 of this prison located in the port city of Guayaquil after the police managed to enter that area, where a confrontation between prisoners like the one that just two days ago caused the massacre in the Latacunga prison (Cotopaxi), with 16 dead and 43 wounded.

According to a SNAI source, the confrontation took place between the inmates of pavilions 2 and 3 against those of pavilion 9. During Wednesday afternoon, shots and detonations could be heard from outside the Litoral Penitentiary and smoke could also be seen. coming from inside the prison compound. The Police reported five officers injured by firearms when they tried to regain control of the prison, something they could not achieve until after 10:00 p.m. local time (3:00 GMT on Thursday, October 6).

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The Litoral Penitentiary houses more than 6,800 prisoners and on September 28, one year has passed since the largest prison massacre in Ecuador in which 122 inmates were murdered, according to the official figure of the SNAI. At the beginning of last September there was already a new confrontation between prisoners with numerous firearms shots that left three injured, including two inmates and a prison guard.

Hours before this latest episode, the SNAI had reported the transfer to various prisons in the country of 135 prisoners from the Latacunga prison, in the Andean province of Cotopaxi, which on Monday was the scene of a massacre that resulted in 16 prisoners killed and others 43 injured. This massacre raised the number of prisoners killed in Ecuadorian prisons to more than 100 since the beginning of 2022 and to more than 450 since 2020, when this series of bloody clashes began between rival gangs vying for internal control of the prisons. Searches carried out after these bloodbaths have revealed that prisoners have in their possession large arsenals of weaponsboth firearms and pistols and even rifles with a large number of bullets, as well as large white weapons, including numerous machetes.