10 dead, 2 decapitated, in Ecuador prison riot following jailbreak
Bloody fighting broke out in a prison in the troubled coastal city of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border, where police said they found 10 dead prisoners in two cell blocks — adding to about 500 inmates massacred in the country since 2021, News.Az reports citing CBS news.
Images shared on social media and verified by Agence France-Presse showed dead men sprawled on the ground with bare, blood-stained torsos, at least two of them decapitated.
Worried family members gathered outside the prison for news of their loved ones.
On Monday, 13 prisoners and a guard were reported killed in southwest Ecuador, whose overcrowded and violent prisons have become operational centers for organized crime groups. Officials said 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.
Nestled between the globe's top two cocaine exporters — Colombia and Peru — the country of some 17 million people has seen violence spiral in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
More than 70% of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador's ports, according to government data.
Since February 2021, gang wars have largely played out inside the country's prisons, where inmates have often been killed in gruesome fashion — their bodies dismembered and burnt.
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