Prisoners in a penitentiary in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador (south), who have been protesting since yesterday Wednesday due to transfers of their prisoners, have taken 57 guards and policemen hostage, Interior Minister Juan Zapata announced Thursday.

As the day had already been marked by two car bomb blasts in the capital Quito, Mr Zapata said seven of the hostages were police officers, adding that “we are concerned for their safety”, during a news conference.

Yesterday, hundreds of military and police officers conducted an operation searching for weapons, ammunition and explosives at the prison in Latacunga (south), one of the largest in the country.

Clashes between gang members inside Ecuadorian prisons are frequent and bloody. Some 430 inmates have been killed in Ecuador’s penitentiaries since 2021.

Various assumptions were made as to why the prisoners took hostages in the prison in Cuenca. The prison service (SNAI) initially assessed that it was probably retaliation for the army’s intervention in the prison in Latacunga.

But the authorities later revised it, citing a protest against transfers of prisoners to other prisons.

Mainly drug-trafficking gangs allegedly linked to Mexican cartels are at war for control of prisons in Ecuador, many of which they have practically turned into centers of operations.

In the face of the continuing wave of violence, outgoing president Guillermo Lasso (right) declared a state of emergency throughout the prison system on July 24. The exemption measure notably allows the armed forces to be deployed inside prisons.