Guayaquil, Ecuador:
At least 62 inmates died Tuesday and quite a few had been injured in riots blamed on gang rivalry at 3 jails in Ecuador’s overcrowded prison method, authorities mentioned.
As safety forces battled to regain handle, distraught family members members waited desperately for news outdoors the prison in Ecuador’s western port city of Guayaquil, exactly where officials mentioned 21 died.
Another 33 died at the prison in Cuenca in the south and eight in Latacunga in the centre of the South American nation, according to Edmundo Moncayo, director of the government’s SNAI prisons management body.
“We want the death list given to us,” mentioned Daniela Soria, 29, one of about 40 girls outdoors the Guayaquil prison, numerous of them in tears.
“We know that the problems are not over because everyone there has a phone and my husband doesn’t call me,” she told AFP.
Earlier, she received a WhatsApp voice message from her husband, Ricardo, which she played back for AFP. “They are going to kill me, get me out of here!” he can be heard exclaiming, the final she heard from him.
Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno, on Twitter, attributed the riots to “criminal organizations” engaged in “simultaneous acts of violence in several prisons.”
The authorities, he mentioned, “are acting to retake control.”
The military was deployed to assistance police quell the uprising.
‘Like a market’
The prosecuting authority mentioned quite a few inmates had been left injured in fighting among “criminal gangs”, like two at Guayaquil in severe situation.
Several police had been also injured, mentioned Moncayo, but no deaths have been reported amongst safety personnel.
Police commander Patricio Carrillo described the scenario as “critical,” even though Interior Minister Patricio Pazmino produced a centralised command post to respond to what he mentioned was “concerted action by criminal organizations to generate violence in penitentiary centres.”
The prison authority described fierce fighting among organized gangs that go by names such as Los Pipos, Los Lobos and Tigrones. They rely on drug trafficking and operate their criminal enterprises from prison.
Moncayo told reporters that on Monday, guards seized two firearms that had been to be used to kill the leader of a group imprisoned in Guayaquil.
“Inside, it is like a market. There is everything: drugs, arms, even puppies. Everything is sold,” mentioned Soria, the wife of prisoner Ricardo.
In order to cut down prisoner numbers amid the coronavirus epidemic, the government commuted the sentences of individuals convicted of minor offences, lowering overcrowding from 42 % to 30 %.
This nevertheless leaves Ecuador’s prison method, with a capacity to residence 29,000 inmates in 60-odd facilities, with a prisoner population of 38,000.
There are 1,500 guards to oversee them.
Dearth of guards
The SNAI has mentioned a dearth of personnel “hinders immediate response” to prisoner revolts.
Last year, inmate disputes left 51 dead, according to police figures.
A 90-day state of emergency in the country’s jails was ordered by Moreno final year to attempt to bring gang activity beneath handle and cut down the violence.
But just in December, prison unrest left 11 prisoners dead and seven injured.
Tuesday’s riots coincided with a march of hundreds of indigenous individuals on Quito to demand a vote recount following a initial round of presidential elections this month saw their candidate left out in the cold.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)