Seventeen prison officers are still being held hostage Wednesday (July 26th) in Ecuador after violent clashes between rival gangs at a prison in Guayaquil, authorities said as they try to determine the exact number of victims.
The prosecutor's office reported Tuesday 31 dead during these clashes in the so-called prison of Guayas 1. However, police said Wednesday they found 11 bodies and 29 "anatomical elements" at the scene. "For now, we are still conducting the investigation on site," Gen. César Zapata Correa, the country's director general of public security, told reporters. "So far we have 11 bodies and 29 anatomical elements," he added.
Mutiny
The 17 prison officers, including guards and administrative staff, are being held in a prison in Esmeraldas province where a mutiny broke out on Tuesday in retaliation for the declaration of a state of emergency throughout the prison system on the same day. "At the moment, seventeen officers are registered as being detained in the CPL (detention center) Esmeraldas," announced the prison administration (SNAI) through its WhatsApp channel.
The mutiny in the prison echoes the violent clashes that erupted for four days in Guayaquil, one of the country's cities most affected by violence and drug trafficking. Since February 2021, Ecuadorian prisons have been the scene of recurrent massacres that have left more than 420 detainees dead, sometimes beheaded or burned. Detention centres have become a place of operations for criminal gangs, who compete for the drug market.
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Violence also erupted Tuesday in the capital Esmeraldas in the eponymous province. Bomb threats were triggered at petrol stations and an explosive device was defused in a prosecutor's office. After the tragedy in the prison of Guayaquil, more than a hundred guards had been taken hostage in five prisons of the country before being largely released on Tuesday. Detainees had also begun a hunger strike on Sunday, which ended on Tuesday.