Inmates from rival gangs in an Ecuadorean prison had fought each other with guns, explosives and blades in a bloodbath that left at least 68 dead, officials said on Saturday.
The fighting occured in the same prison where a riot in September claimed 119 lives.
Authorities said that they had regained control of the prison in Guayaquil for a second time in as many days after Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso’s spokesman said that fighting had again broken out earlier in the day between inmates from rival gangs tied to drug trafficking rings.
Photo: AP
In the initial riot that began on Friday night, prisoners fought with “savagery,” said Pablo Arosemena, governor of Guayas Province, where the prison is located.
The riot began at about 7pm, when prisoners tried to enter Block 2 of the jail, where their rivals were held, firing gunshots, detonating explosives and swinging machetes, and prompting police to move in.
At least 68 prisoners were killed and another 25 were injured, the Ecuadorean attorney general’s office wrote on Twitter.
In a second flare-up of fighting on Saturday, inmates from two other blocks attacked each other, presidential spokesman Carlos Jijon said.
He later confirmed that police had pushed through to the prison’s interior and that the situation was “under control.”
Officials said that the violence started when one of the gangs inside the prison, the Tiguerones, was left without its leader because he was released after serving part of his sentence for stealing auto parts.
Other groups, sensing weakness in the Tiguerones with that man gone, attacked the gang to try to crush it, Arosemena said.
He said their goal was “to go in and carry out a total massacre.”
Earlier on Saturday, police officers in riot gear were seen climbing the blood-stained prison walls, while the body of an inmate in an orange prison jumpsuit lay on the roof of the jail encircled by barbed wire.
Images posted on social media, whose authenticity has not been confirmed by the authorities, showed a pile of bodies in a nighttime prison courtyard consumed by flames while inmates standing nearby beat the bodies with sticks.
In another video, a prisoner from the block that was being attacked says: “We are locked in our pavilion. They want to kill us all.”
“Please share this video. Please help us,” the inmate says, as repeated bangs are heard in the background.
Dozens of people gathered outside the prison gates on Saturday morning, fainting or weeping as they tried to learn the fate of their loved ones inside.
“They are human beings, help them,” read a banner held by one of the families, kept back by a deployment of police and soldiers supported by an armored vehicle.
A group of women spoke to an inmate by mobile phone, shouting prisoners’ names in the hope that the inmate knew whether their loved ones were still alive.
“Here there are relatives from Block 2, and they need to know about the boys,” the woman holding the phone said.
A crackly voice was heard from the phone, but the signal was spotty and then there was just silence.
At a coroner’s office in the city, Felix Gonzalez showed up holding his imprisoned son’s ID card and asked if his body was there.
“It is not fair for him to die for stealing a cellphone,” Gonzalez told Agence France-Presse.
More than 300 prisoners have been killed this year in Ecuador’s criminal detention system, where thousands of inmates tied to drug gangs square off in violent clashes that often turn into riots.
September’s unrest was one of the worst prison massacres in Latin American history, and the latest deadly violence in Guayaquil only reaffirmed the broken state of Ecuador’s jails.
Rival drug gangs have been waging a bloody feud in the Guayaquil prison, a facility that was designed for 5,300 inmates, but houses 8,500.
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