A prolonged gun battle between rival gangs inside Ecuador’s largest prison has left at least 68 inmates dead.
It is the latest violence to hit the Litoral Penitentiary, which only a few weeks ago was the scene of the country’s worst prison massacre.
The fighting lasted for almost eight hours in the jail in the coastal city of Guayaquil, with authorities blaming prison gangs linked to international drug cartels.
Videos circulating on social media showed bodies, some burned, lying on the ground inside the prison.
Governor Pablo Arosemena of Guayas province, where Guayaquil is located, said inmates “tried to dynamite a wall to get into pavilion 2 to carry out a massacre. They also burned mattresses to try to to drown (their rivals) in smoke.
“We are fighting against drug trafficking. It is very hard.”
Police commander Tanya Varela said authorities using drones saw that inmates in three pavilions were armed with guns and explosives and were trying to enter pavilion 2, which was without its leader, who had been released earlier this week.
She said police officers entered to try to protect the pavilion and get the inmates in the other areas to return to their cells.
“These events are due to the dispute among criminal gangs over territory; there are now pavilions without leaders,” she said.
Authorities said that besides the 58 dead, 12 inmates were injured and officials seized bombs and guns.
The prison violence comes amid a national state of emergency decreed by Ecuador’s president Guillermo Lasso in October that empowers security forces to fight drug trafficking and other crimes.
Ecuador’s penitentiaries are seeing a wave of brutal violence.
In late September, another battle among gang members in Litoral prison killed at least 118 people in what authorities described as the South American country’s worst ever prison massacre.
Officials said at least five of the dead were beheaded.
In February, 79 inmates were killed in simultaneous riots in various prisons. So far this year, more than 300 prisoners have died in clashes in jails across the country.
Outside the Litoral prison on Saturday, relatives of inmates gathered for news of their loved ones.
Francisca Chancay, 55, whose brother has been in the prison for eight months, said: “Enough of this. When will they stop the killing? This is a prison not a slaughterhouse, they are human beings.”
Some were calling for Ecuador’s security forces to take control of the prisons.
Ecuador has 40,000 inmates in its prison system, of which about 8,500 are in Litoral. According to prison services’ data, the Litoral prison was designed to hold only 5,000 people.
Mr Arosemena said authorities in Ecuador will deal with the prison overcrowding by granting pardons, relocating inmates and transferring some foreign inmates back to their homelands.
“There will be more than 1,000 pardons, but this is part of a process,” he said.
The Guayas governor also said Ecuador will receive international aid from countries like Colombia, the United States, Israel and Spain to deal with the crisis in its prisons. The aid will be in resources and logistics.
One major problem is the presence of so many guns and explosives in the hands of inmates. “For example, installing a freight scanner in the Guayaquil Penitentiary to avoid the entry of arms costs four million dollars,” said Mr Arosemena.
