Enlarge image
Rauch comes from a detention center in Guayaquil, Ecuador: 68 people died in riots over the weekend
Photo: JUAN DIEGO MONTENEGRO / EPA
Almost 70 people were killed in gang fighting over the weekend in a prison near the port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador.
It is the third detention center massacre, with dozen dead, in the South American country this year.
In response to the violence, the federal police and armed forces are now taking control of the prisons until further notice.
This was announced by President Guillermo Lasso on Monday after the signing of the "National Plan on the Crisis in the Prison System".
In the future, police officers and soldiers are supposed to keep order inside and outside the prisons.
Around 1,000 soldiers and police officers finally moved into the detention center near Guayaquil.
You should now take control there indefinitely.
It was only in September that 118 people were killed in the most serious massacre in the history of the Ecuadorian penal system in the same prison.
In February, 79 people were killed in violent clashes between rival gangs in several prisons across the country.
Like almost everywhere in Latin America, the prisons in Ecuador are overcrowded.
Many prisons are controlled by criminal syndicates.
Numerous imprisoned gang bosses control the business of their criminal organizations from prison.
Clashes between members of gangs linked to Mexican drug cartels have continued to occur in prisons.
With its location between the major drug producers Colombia and Peru, Ecuador is an important hub for drug smuggling to the US and Europe.
Guayaquil is the country's main port city.
It is considered to be the central hub for the cocaine trade.
"Ecuador is seriously threatened by the drug mafia attack," said President Lasso.
"She's trying to take control of the country's prisons and rob us of the peace and quiet on the streets."
kha / dpa