This violence “is the result of a territorial dispute between criminal gangs inside the penitentiary”, according to local police.
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New clashes between prisoner gangs left 68 dead in a prison in southwest Ecuador, already the scene at the end of September of one of the worst massacres of detainees in Latin America, the attorney general’s office announced on Saturday (November 13th). This violence, marked by acts of great “savagery” according to the authorities, have also made “25 injured”.
These clashes started in the large penitentiary center of Guayaquil, Friday, November 12 at around 7 p.m., said the head of the local police. They “are the result of a territorial dispute between criminal gangs inside the penitentiary”, she added. The intervention of the police to try to restore order in the prison has “save lives”, assured for his part the governor of the province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil.
On September 28, 119 people died in the same circumstances in the same Guayas 1 prison. Some detainees had been dismembered, beheaded, or burned in violent clashes between gangs linked to drug trafficking and Mexican cartels. After the killing, a dramatic worsening of the country’s long prison crisis, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso proclaimed “the state of exception” in the 65 Ecuadorian prisons, notably with the deployment of significant military reinforcements.