QUITO, Ecuador — A prolonged gun battle between rival gangs inside Ecuador’s largest prison early Saturday left at least 58 inmates dead in the latest violence to hit the Litoral Penitentiary, which recently saw the country’s worst prison bloodbath.
The fighting lasted for almost eight hours in the lockup in the coastal city of Guayaquil and authorities attributed the fighting to prison gangs linked to international drug cartels. Videos circulating on social media showed bodies, some burned, lying on the ground inside the prison.
Inmates “tried to dynamite a wall to get into pavilion 2 to carry out a massacre. They also burned mattresses to try to to drown (their rivals) in smoke,” said Gov. Pablo Arosemena of Guayas province where Guayaquil is located.
“We are fighting against drug trafficking,” Arosemena said. “It is very hard.”
Police commander Gen. Tanya Varela said authorities using drones saw that inmates in three pavilions were armed with guns and explosives and were trying to enter pavilion 2, which was without its leader who had been released earlier this week.
She said police officers entered to try to protect the pavilion and get the inmates in the other areas to return to their cells. “These events are due to the dispute among criminal gangs over territory; there are now pavilions without leaders,” she said.
Authorities said that besides the 58 dead, 12 inmates were injured and officials seized bombs and guns.
The prison violence comes amid a national state of emergency decreed by President Guillermo Lasso in October that empowers security forces to fight drug trafficking and other crimes.
Ecuador’s penitentiaries are seeing a wave of brutal violence.
In late September, a battle among gang members in Litoral prison killed at least 118 people in what authorities described as the South American country’s worst prison massacre. Officials said at least five of the dead were found to have been beheaded. In February, 79 inmates were killed in simultaneous riots in various prisons. And in July, 22 prisoners were killed in Ecuadorian penitentiaries.
Outside the Litoral prison on Saturday, relatives of inmates gathered for news of their loved ones.
“Enough of this. When will they stop the killing? This is a prison not a slaughterhouse, they are human beings,” said Francisca Chancay, 55, whose brother has been in the prison for eight months.
Some were calling for Ecuador’s security forces to take control of the prisons.
“What is (President Guillermo) Lasso waiting for? That there are more deaths?″ said Maritza Vera, 62, whose son is an inmate. ”Have mercy, where are the human rights. We thought this was going to change, but it’s worse.”
Ecuador has 40,000 inmates in its penitentiary system, of which about 8,500 are in Litoral. According to prison services’ data, the Litoral prison was designed to hold only 5,000 people.
“I feel sad and in anguish because there is too much death,” Vera said. “We are desperate.”