Twelve prisoners died Friday in a penitentiary in Equateur in new clashes, while six inmates were found hanged this week and three guards killed, the prosecution said on Saturday. Ecuadorian prisons are the scene of recurrent massacres between prisoners, against a backdrop of rivalry between criminal groups fighting over drug trafficking.
“An investigation has been opened to identify those responsible for the death of 12 inmates of the Littoral penitentiary in Guayaquil,” the prosecution said on Twitter. Six detainees were found hanged on Wednesday in this 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 this penitentiary complex in Guyaquil. And on Friday, at least three prisoners were injured in gun battles in the same prison.
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 hub and epicenter of drug trafficking in Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru – the world’s main cocaine producers.