Clashes erupted Wednesday night at the Guayaquil Penitentiary in the southwestern Ecuador, a theater of recurring episodes that has killed at least 180 people in the past five months.
“Clashes were recorded” between detainees in different wards of the Waya 1 prison, the Ecuadorian prison service (SNAI) said via Twitter.
The service added that it coordinates with the police and the armed forces “the entry of selected forces” into the prison in order to “strengthen security”.
Fire and explosions were heard outside the prison, a French news agency correspondent on the ground said, adding that tear gas had been used extensively.
The prison in Guayaquil was turned into a theater of violent riots and massacres with about 320 dead in 2021.
On September 29, 119 prisoners were killed. It was the worst prison massacre in Latin American history. Inmates were dismembered, beheaded, burned alive.
President Guillermo Lasso has declared a state of emergency in all the country’s prisons, ordering the deployment of the army.
In mid-November, another 62 detainees were killed in the same prison when new clashes broke out between gangs linked to drug trafficking.
Ecuador has 65 prisons, with a nominal capacity of 30,000 places, but holds some 39,000 people, including some 15,000 who have not been sentenced.
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