14 killed, including a guard, in prison clashes in Ecuador as some inmates escape
Inmates in Ecuador fought each other with guns and explosives in a riot that left 13 prisoners and a guard dead, police said.
The mayhem was the latest in a series of bloodbaths to engulf gang-ridden, overcrowded prisons in a once-peaceful country now at ground zero of the violent Latin American drug trade.
An unknown number of inmates escaped in the clash between rival gangs, during which another 14 people were injured, a masked police officer identified as commander Colonel William Calle told the Ecuavisa channel.
Thirteen inmates have been recaptured.
Calle said gunfire broke out in the early morning hours, alerting prison guards and police who rushed to that part of the prison in Machala, in southwest Ecuador near the Peruvian border.
One guard was killed as he entered, and others were taken hostage, said the officer.
Calle said the confrontation lasted about 40 minutes, during which inmates "fired guns, threw bombs, grenades."
The dead inmates belonged to the rival Los Choneros and Los Lobos gangs, two of the biggest drug trafficking groups in Ecuador. Earlier this month, the U.S. designated both gangs as foreign terrorist organizations in the Trump administration's latest move against cartels.
Police said the violence was the result of "fighting between gangs" in a facility housing double the number of inmates it was designed for.
Calle said "control has already been regained" over the prison.
He did not specify the fate of the hostages or how many inmates were on the run.
Ecuador's prisons are among the most dangerous in the world, and many have been taken over by drug gangs. The penitentiaries have been under military control since January 2024, when President Daniel Noboa declared a state of "internal armed conflict" after a brutal wave of violence, sparked by the jailbreak of a powerful crime boss.
In September 2024, the director of Ecuador's biggest prison, Maria Daniela Icaza, was killed in an armed attack while driving. Icaza's death came just days after the head of a prison in the Amazonian province of Sucumbios, Alex Guevara, was killed, also in an attack while traveling by car.
Ecuador recorded more than 4,600 homicides in the first half of the year, a 47% increase from the same period of 2024, data from the Ecuadoran Observatory of Organized Crime shows.
Gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country's biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, after he escaped from a maximum-security prison in 2024.
In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macías to the United States, and he pleaded not guilty. A seven-count indictment charged Macías, who leads Los Choneros, with multiple counts, including international cocaine distribution and smuggling firearms from the U.S.
