Rival Ecuadoran inmates clash claims 14
An unknown number of inmates escaped in the clash between rival gangs, during which another 14 people were injured.
Ariel Suárez / AFP
Machala (AFP) — Inmates in Ecuador fought each other with guns and explosives in a riot that left 13 prisoners and a guard dead, police said Monday.
The mayhem was the latest in a series of bloodbaths to engulf gang-ridden, overcrowded prisons in a once-peaceful country now at ground zero of the violent Latin American drug trade.
An unknown number of inmates escaped in the clash between rival gangs, during which another 14 people were injured, a masked police officer identified as commander Colonel William Calle told the Ecuavisa channel.
Thirteen inmates have been recaptured.
Calle said gunfire broke out in the early morning hours, alerting prison guards and police who rushed to that part of the prison in the city of Machala, in southwest Ecuador near the Peruvian border.
One guard was killed as he entered, and others were taken hostage, said the officer.
Calle said the confrontation lasted about 40 minutes, during which inmates “fired guns, threw bombs, grenades.”
Videos released by the police show heavily armed officers entering the prison to the sound of explosions.
“I’m a police officer,” a man can be heard shouting from inside a cell. Another voice can be heard pleading: “Please don’t shoot.”
The dead inmates belonged to the rival Los Choneros and Los Lobos gangs, two of the biggest drug trafficking groups in Ecuador, which have been designated foreign terrorist organizations by the United States earlier this month.
Police said the violence was the result of “fighting between gangs” in a facility housing double the number of inmates it was designed for.
Organized crime has transformed Ecuador, a country of about 17 million, into one of the most violent nations in the world.
Calle said “control has already been regained” over the prison.
He did not specify the fate of the hostages or how many inmates were on the run.
Nestled between the globe’s top two cocaine exporters — Colombia and Peru — Ecuador has seen violence spiral in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.