Ecuador’s prisons see another violent riot, with explosions and shootings in Machala.
A prison riot caused by gang fighting in southern Ecuador has left 14 people dead and another 14 wounded, according to a local police chief.
Prisoners in the port town of Machala, south of Guayaquil, faced off with authorities on Monday, killing a guard and kidnapping officers, Police Chief William Calle told TV network Ecuavisa.
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“From the inside, they were shooting, throwing bombs, grenades,” Calle said.
Some prisoners escaped, and 13 have been recaptured so far, he added.
After about 40 minutes, authorities were able to retake control of the prison, according to Calle.
Ecuador has been plagued by prison riots in recent years, with hundreds of inmates killed. The government of President Daniel Noboa, who has vowed to crack down on crime, attributes the clashes to gangs vying for territory and control.
‘Don’t shoot’
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 were designated as “foreign terrorist organizations” by the United States earlier this month.
Organised crime has transformed Ecuador, a country of about 17 million, into one of the most violent nations in the world.
‘Internal armed conflict’
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.
More than 70 percent of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data.
Gang wars have largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where some 500 inmates have been killed since February 2021, often in gruesome fashion, their bodies dismembered and burnt.
Ecuador’s biggest prison massacre happened in 2021, when more than 100 inmates died in clashes in Guayaquil.
Prisoners went live on social media to broadcast the violence, showing decapitated and charred bodies.
Last year, gang members took scores of prison guards hostage after the jailbreak of narcotics boss Jose Adolfo Macias, aka “Fito”, while allies on the outside detonated bombs and held a television presenter at gunpoint live on air.
Noboa declared a “state of internal armed conflict” and ordered that the military take control of the prisons. Last month, however, eight penitentiaries, including Machala, were returned to police control.
Fito – the boss of Los Choneros – was recaptured in June this year, more than a year after his escape.
He had been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for involvement in organised crime, drug trafficking and murder, but continued pulling the strings of the criminal underworld from behind bars.
Videos emerged of Fito holding wild parties, some with fireworks, illustrating the lawlessness of Ecuador’s prisons.
Los Choneros has ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Colombia’s Gulf Clan – the world’s largest cocaine exporter – and Balkan mafias, according to the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory.
