At least fifteen prisoners killed and fourteen others wounded. is the preliminary result of the new incidents registered in the early hours of this Tuesday morning in the Penitenciaria del Litoral, the prison maximum security largest of Ecuadorlocated in the city of Guayaquil and known as La Roca.
The National Service of Integral Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the penitentiary unit of the State, stated in a communiqué that the Security Block, composed of the Police, the Armed Forces and the Ministries of Interior and Defense, has at present absolute control of the center penitentiary.
According to the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo, neighbors in the area alerted this Tuesday around 3:00 a.m. of disturbances in the penitentiary center. According to a preliminary police report, gunshots were fired in the ward area and several inmates fled the area.
In this same penitentiary center, a month ago, the following were found the bodies of two inmates. In mid-September, its director, María Daniela Icaza, was shot dead by an assailant on her way home.
Ecuador is going through a penitentiary crisis. which has led the government to declare a state of internal armed conflict in January of this year following the a commando raid on a television channelThis was the culmination of an escalation of violence that had taken place in the country’s prisons. One of these is the aforementioned Penitenciaría del Litoral, of which the following fire was reported the leader of Los Choneros, Adolfo Villamar Macías, alias Fitostill a fugitive from justice and one of those responsible for the prison riots.
The Penitenciaría del Litoral is the largest prison in the Guayaquil prison complex, a complex of five prisons where around 12,000 inmates are held. and which in previous years has been the scene of the worst massacres among inmates recorded within the wave of criminal violence in which Ecuador has found itself since the end of 2020.