Spanish
Quito.- At least nine inmates died in a prison in the Ecuadorian city of Machala, where last month another 31 inmates were killed in clashes between rival gangs, local media reported on Sunday, while the agency in charge of prisons has not commented on the new incident.
Preliminary reports released on social media show images of dozens of family members stationed outside the prison in the capital of the province of El Oro, bordering Peru.
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Despite the insistence of the press, the National Service for Comprehensive Care for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI), in charge of the control of prisons, has only limited itself to indicating that they are "verifying all the information with the competent authorities". Citing police sources, the Primicias portal indicated that the inmates died of asphyxiation and that eight of them have already been identified. He added that the riot would have occurred after, around 4:00 PM local time (9:00 PM GMT), an explosive device, presumably a drone, exploded near the prison. This device, the detonation of which was heard several blocks away, would have been used to distract the control agents while the riot was taking place inside the prison, he added. He asserted that the uniformed officers went to carry out the verifications of the loud noise and upon returning to the prison they found the bodies of the murdered inmates.Hanged Convicts
On November 9, 27 inmates died after being hanged in Machala prison, after four others were killed and 33 were injured, as well as a police officer, during a confrontation between rival gangs. On November 1st, twelve people were found dead in three prisons in Ecuador, as confirmed at the time by the SNAI. Six men were found in the Penitenciaría del Litoral, the most populated and dangerous prison in Ecuador, located in the coastal city of Guayaquil; another four in the Turi prison, in the Andean city of Cuenca, and another two in the Esmeraldas prison, in the north of the country. In the case of the Penitentiary inmates, the SNAI indicated that they were "natural deaths." The inmates would have died from tuberculosis, a disease that would have ended the lives of twelve other inmates this month. Prisons are one of the epicenters of the unprecedented criminal violence crisis that Ecuador is going through, with around 600 inmates having been murdered inside since 2021, the majority in a series of massacres due to clashes between rival gangs.Algunas prisiones están militarizadas y otras bajo control de la Policía Nacional, en el marco del "conflicto armado interno" que el presidente Daniel Noboa declaró en 2024 para luchar contra las bandas delictivas, a quienes se les atribuye la escalada de violencia que ha llevado al país a estar a la cabeza del índice de homicidios en Latinoamérica.
A situation that has worsened in 2025, as in the first half of this year Ecuador recorded 4,619 homicides, 47% more than in the same period of 2024, when 3,143 were counted.
