A prison riot in Ecuador leaves 31 prisoners dead and several injured

Ecuador's prisons are still a powder keg. The latest prison riot at the Litoral Penitentiary, in the port city of Guayaquil, has left 31 people dead and 14 injured, including a police officer and a soldier, according to that country's Prosecutor's Office.

The Public Ministry has reported that, once the Ecuadorian Police and the Armed Forces have taken control of the situation, after more than 2,700 police officers and soldiers managed to enter the prison “to bring order”, agents of the Prosecutor's Office have entered the prison to proceed with the removal of the corpses.

In addition, they have managed to free more than a hundred agents of the Prison Security and Surveillance Corps (CSVP) who were being held.

Two open investigations

For its part, the Prosecutor's Office has opened two investigations, one of them for “murder of prisoners” and the second, for terrorism, for detonations and the amount of weapons and ammunition found inside the prison.

The Government decreed in the early hours of Monday the state of emergency in the country's prisons, after which the State security bodies and forces have finally managed to take control of the penitentiary center, the usual scene of riots.

On this occasion, the riots originated from disputes between members of the 'Los Tiguerones' and 'Los Lobos' gangs, confined in pavilions eight and nine, respectively, according to information collected by the local newspaper El Universo.

Both groups maintained a criminal alliance until just a month and a half ago, when there was a break that has led to hostile behavior between the two, according to reports prepared by the Ecuadorian government.

The conflict unleashed over the weekend in the Litoral Penitentiary caused a chain reaction, which led to incidents of a lesser caliber in other prisons in the Andean region of the country.