Ecuador declares prison emergency after 116 are killed in riot

Relatives of inmates wait for information outside a prison in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on September 29 after the riot. Pic/AFP

Ecuador's president has declared a state of emergency in the prison system following a battle among gang members in a coastal lockup that killed at least 116 people and injured 80 in what authorities say was the worst prison bloodbath ever in the country. Officials said at least five of the dead were found to have been beheaded.

President Guillermo Lasso decreed a state of emergency Wednesday, which will give the government powers that include deploying police and soldiers inside prisons. The order came a day after bloodshed at the Litoral penitentiary in Guayaquil that officials blamed on gangs linked to international drug cartels fighting for control of the facility.

Lasso, visibly moved by the carnage, said at a news conference that what had happened in the prison was "bad and sad." He also said he could not guarantee that authorities had regained control of the lockup.

"It is regrettable that the prisons are being turned into territories for power disputes by criminal gangs," he said, adding that he would act with "absolute firmness" to regain control of the Litoral prison and prevent the violence from spreading to other penitentiaries.

Images circulating on social media showed dozens of bodies in the prison's Pavilions 9 and 10 and scenes that looked like battlefields. The fighting was with firearms, knives and bombs, officials said. Earlier, regional police commander Fausto Buenaño had said that bodies were being found in the prison's pipelines.

Outside the prison morgue, the relatives of inmates wept, with some describing to reporters the cruelty with which their loved ones were killed, decapitated and dismembered.

80
No. of people injured in the prison

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