At least 75 killed in Ecuador prison riots

At least 75 inmates died on Tuesday and several were injured in riots blamed on gang rivalry at three jails in Ecuador’s overcrowded prison system, authorities said. As security forces battled to regain control, distraught family members waited desperately for news outside the prison in Ecuador’s western port city of Guayaquil, where officials said 21 died. Another 33 died at the prison in Cuenca in the south and eight in Latacunga in the centre of the South American country, according to Edmundo Moncayo, director of the government’s SNAI prisons management body. “We want the death list given to us,” said Daniela Soria, 29, one of about 40 women outside the Guayaquil prison, many of them in tears. Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said authorities “are acting to retake control”.