Prisoners hanged, female officials assassinated by hitmen and shootings that go on for hours. The prison complex in the port of Guayaquil, the largest in Ecuador, closed its tragic week with a shootout between rival gangs, which in the first estimates of the prison director claimed the lives of 12 prisoners. The images of corpses throughout the compound were added to those that had already hit hard throughout the week in a country that lives in terror the wave of violence caused by drug trafficking and organized crime.
The string of violent deaths began last Wednesday, when officials found six prisoners hanged in their cells in Pavilion 5, under the control of the bloodthirsty gang of Los Águilas. Hours later, the prison guards Andrea Chiles, María Barragán and Bélgica Rentería were assassinated while eating, during the armed attack provoked from outside the Litoral Penitentiary, one of the battle territories of the criminal gangs that run part of their operations. from inside prisons. The Police are looking for the hitmen who ended the lives of the officials.
There are more than 400 prisoners murdered since 2021, with more than 20 registered killings, the majority in Guayaquil. During the riot in September of that year alone, more than 100 inmates died.
The insecurity situation is of such a caliber in Ecuador that President Guillermo Lasso himself, who is currently facing an impeachment process that could end with his dismissal, yesterday ordered the police to “act firmly. It’s to be used against criminals.” The president recognized that some of the attacks that the country is suffering are ordered from prisons.
Different organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, consider that the lack of state control in prisons has allowed drug gangs to recruit militiamen to their cause.
Violent events take place in Ecuador at breakneck speed. The same civil war between gangs, caused by the dispute over drug trafficking territories, was behind the massacre registered this week in the port of Esmeraldas. As if they were pirates from other times, a dozen men disembarked with blood and fire on a dock in the port and started shooting with the fishermen and other workers who were there. A port security camera recorded the attack in a video that made the rounds of social media at full speed.
In an unprecedented event, the US Embassy issued an alert about alleged attacks in Guayaquil that ultimately did not take place.
The government reacted to the sum of events by decreeing the militarization of the entire national territory, in an attempt to strengthen the security plans that until now have not stopped the escalation of terror.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project