QUITO, July 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Riots at two prisons in Ecuador on Wednesday left eight dead and about 20 injured, including police officers, authorities said.
Violence erupted at a prison in the southwest province of Guayas where eight inmates were killed and two police officers injured, and at another in the central Andean province of Cotopaxi, where around 20 were injured, the SNAI prisons management body said on Twitter.
The two jails had previously experienced violent riots in February, when clashes between rival gangs vying for control of the country’s main prisons left 79 inmates dead in a single day.
Ecuador’s prison system has about 60 facilities with capacity for 29,000 inmates. But overcrowding is around 30 percent, with 38,000 detainees watched by 1,500 guards that experts say it would take 4,000 for effective control. — NNN-AGENCIES
