GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador: Six inmates were killed Friday during a disturbance inside a Guayaquil prison, authorities said, in the latest deadly unrest to strike Ecuador’s penal system.
“An event occurred” in one of the cellblocks of the Guayas 1 prison, “resulting in six dead people,” the SNAI national prison authority said in a statement.
#BREAKING Six inmates killed in Ecuador prison unrest: authorities pic.twitter.com/KQ28HWcDyV
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) October 7, 2023
The public prosecutor’s office said that its agents, along with police and the military, were “executing security protocols… in light of the disturbance that occurred Friday afternoon.”
It added in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that “in the coming hours, specialized military personnel will carry out the first raids and reconnaissance of Cellblock 7, where the incidents originated, to take control of the situation.”
Guayas 1 is one of five facilities that make up a large prison complex in Guayaquil, a key port city that has become one of the country’s increasingly bloody centers of a turf war between rival drug-trafficking gangs.
#UPDATE Six inmates were killed Friday during a disturbance inside a Guayaquil prison, authorities said, in the latest deadly unrest to strike Ecuador's penal system.
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) October 7, 2023
In late July, a riot in the Guayas 1 prison left more than 30 people dead.
According to press reports, the victims are the six Colombians who were arrested following the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio on August 9 as he was leaving a rally in northern Quito ahead of first round elections.
Authorities have not confirmed those reports.
Right-wing president Guillermo Lasso, who on Thursday traveled to New York for personal matters, announced on X that he would “immediately convene the Security Cabinet.”
“In the next few hours, I will return to Ecuador to attend to this emergency. Neither complicity nor cover-up, here the truth will be known,” he added. —AFP/APP
