Berliner Tageblatt - Three inmates dead in latest Ecuador prison riot

The SNAI agency overseeing the prison system said the violence broke out at La Roca prison in the port city of Guayaquil, a growing nerve center in the global drug trade where a state of emergency was declared only three days earlier.

After the fighting erupted, prison agents, police and the military activated security protocols with which "control was retaken," the SNAI statement said.

The maximum security facility has a capacity for some 150 inmates and was housing 23 prisoners at the time, most of them leaders of drug trafficking gangs engaged in a bloody struggle for power inside the prisons and on the streets.

Speaking in a televised address to the nation on Saturday, President Guillermo Lasso said he had declared a state of emergency in Guayaquil and the neighboring districts of Duran and Samborondon, and in Santa Elena and Los Rios provinces.

The decree lets security forces set up checkpoints and conduct warrantless searches of people and property, and institutes a nightly curfew from 1:00 am to 5:00 am.

Last year, Lasso declared similar temporary states of emergency three times for Guayaquil, which has faced a sharp spike in killings related to organized crime.

Lasso did not say how long the current state of emergency would last.

The president also announced late last year a plan to double prison staff, shortly after rioting left nine dead in a facility outside the capital Quito.

In early November 2022, Lasso's government relocated some 2,400 inmates, triggering an uprising by gang members who went on shooting sprees and set off car bombs at gas stations and police stations.

Ecuador has experienced numerous prison massacres since February 2021 which have left about 400 dead, many of them beheaded or burnt.

Once a relatively peaceful neighbor of major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has gone from being a drug transit route to a vital distribution center wracked by drug violence.

Authorities blame the wave of violent crime on rival gangs with ties to Mexican cartels.

O.Lorenz--BTB