The death toll is likely to rise as many of the injured are taken to hospital in critical condition, Ecuador’s National Police Commander General Fausto Salinas told a news conference Monday.
The riot broke out on the wing of the Social Bellavista Rehabilitation Center in Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas, a town about 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) west of the capital, Quito.
Salinas told reporters that at least 112 prisoners had been captured. Ecuador’s interior ministry says authorities have regained control of the facility’s maximum security wing.
One police officer was injured in the operation to regain control of the prison. Prison guards confiscated four rifles, four pistols and four grenades from prisoners during operations, according to Ecuadorian police.
“My deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in the Hundred Domingo prison riot. This is an unfortunate result of gang violence,” Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso wrote on Twitter.
Ecuador’s prison system has been in a state of emergency since deadly clashes erupted in September 2021, when 118 people were killed in clashes involving automatic weapons and even grenades.
More than 300 prisoners were killed in prison violence in 2021, according to the Ecuadorian Prison Service’s SNAI.
Ecuador is a key transit point for cocaine from South America to the United States and Asia, making it fertile ground for gang clashes. In this escalating struggle for territorial control, prisons have become contested battlefields.
Prisons in the country are also chronically overcrowded. In July 2021, then-prison chief Eduardo Moncayo told local media that the Guayaquil littoral prison was the most overcrowded in the country, with more than 9,000 inmates at a facility planned for 5,000 people.
In October, authorities said thousands of prisoners, including the elderly, women and people with disabilities and terminal illnesses, would be pardoned to make way.
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