At least eleven injured and eleven arrested this Tuesday left the detonation of three grenades in a new confrontation at the Litoral Penitentiarythe largest, most populated and dangerous prison in Ecuador, where a massacre occurred in mid-November in which 17 inmates were murdered and another 15 were injured.
Among those injured in this Tuesday’s incident are nine prisoners, a soldier and a prison guard, Pablo Dávila, head of the National Police for Zone 8, which includes the city of Guayaquil and its metropolitan area, told journalists.
The injured were taken to a hospital to receive medical attention, according to the National Service for Comprehensive Care of Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the State institution in charge of the control and administration of Ecuadorian prisons.
At the same time, the prison authorities proceeded to evacuate the staff from this prison located in Guayaquil, “under strict security controls.”
Guards behind the detonation of the grenades
Those arrested as the alleged cause of detonating the grenades are seven inmates and two prison guards, as suspected of having provided the explosive devices to the prisoners that caused this incident, which occurred around 2:30 p.m. local time (7:30 p.m. GMT).
According to the SNAI, the incidents were caused by two inmates and led the Armed Forces and the National Police to activate the corresponding protocols to try to restore order within the prison facility.
Ecuador’s prisons are under military control since last January when the president, Daniel Noboa, declared the internal armed conflict against criminal groups, which he began to call “terrorists” and to which the massacres that occurred in prisons in recent years are attributed.
With about 6,000 inmates inside, the Litoral Penitentiary is the largest prison in the Guayaquil prison complex, a set of five prisons where around 12,000 prisoners are held.
In previous years, this space has been the scene of the worst massacres among prisoners recorded within the wave of criminal violence that Ecuador has found itself in since the end of 2020.
More than 500 prisoners murdered
More than 500 prisoners have been murdered in Ecuadorian prisons between 2021 and 2023, most of them in a series of prison massacres by Clashes between rival criminal gangs.
The last of these episodes occurred on November 12 in the same Litorial Penitentiary, with the result of 17 dead and 15 injured. Another similar massacre left 31 dead in three days in 2023 in the same prison facility.
Ecuador is going through an insecurity crisis that has placed it as the Latin American country with the highest homicide rateregistering 47.2 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, eight times more than in 2016, which is attributed to the rise of organized crime, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining.
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