QUITO, Ecuador (AP) – Sixty-two detainees have died in riots in prisons in three cities in Ecuador as a result of fighting between rival gangs and an escape attempt, authorities said on Tuesday.
Prison director Edmundo Moncayo told a news conference that 800 police stations had helped regain control of the facility. Hundreds of officers in tactical units had been deployed since the fighting broke out late Monday.
Moncayo said two groups were trying to obtain “criminal leadership in detention centers” and that the clashes were precipitated by a search of weapons by police on Monday.
Photos and videos on social networks show the alleged detainees beheaded and dismembered in the middle of some blood.
Deadly prison riots have occurred relatively frequently in recent years in Ecuador, whose prisons have been designed for about 27,000 detainees but house about 38,000.
President Lenin Moreno wrote on Twitter that he had ordered the Ministry of Defense to “exercise strict control over weapons, ammunition and explosives in the outer perimeter of prisons” following this week’s riots.
Moncayo said 33 died in Cuenca prison in southern Ecuador, 21 in Guayaquil on the Pacific coast and eight in central Latacunga.
Moncayo said that almost 70% of the country’s penitentiary population lives in the centers where the disturbances took place.
Government Minister Patricio Pazmiño sent a tweet blaming “the concerted action of criminal organizations to generate violence in prisons in the country”, but added: “We are managing actions to regain control”.