At least 43 are dead in Ecuador prison riot, officials say

At least 43 people died in a prison riot in northwest Ecuador on Monday, according to a statement shared on Twitter by the country’s public prosecutor. And that count couldclimb.

A “significant number of inmates” have escaped, the interior minister said at a news conference.

The majority of those who died were killed with knives and other improvised weapons, Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo said. Videos of what appeared to show bloodied bodies lying on the prison grounds circulated on social media. The Washington Post has not independently verified the videos.

The riot Monday at Bella Vista prison in Santo Domingo, the country’s fourthlargest city, left at least 13 inmates injured, and at least 112 were captured trying to escape, officials said.

The slayings came amid a spate of gang-related violence in the country. Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency in thee provinces last month. Last year, prison riots left at least 68 dead in one instance and more than 100 dead in another. In April, at least 20 people were killed, and some mutilated, during a riot in El Turi prison, near the city of Cuenca.

Carrillo said he had deployed police and armed forces to quell Monday’s riot. Ecuador’s police said via Twitter they had regained control of the prison.

Fausto Salinas, the chief of the National Police, told local media outlets that the transfer of a gang leader to the Santo Domingo prison sparked the violence. Carrillo said the riot was sparked by a clash between the Los Lobos and R7 gangs.

Ecuador is a key stop in the movement of cocaine from South America to the United States, Europe and Asia — and a frequent battleground for rival gangs fighting to control these routes. The country’s notoriously overcrowded and under-resourced prisons have become caught in escalating turf battles.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has accused Ecuador of failing to provide safe conditions in its prisons.