QUITO, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) — A deadly prison clash between inmates armed with guns and knives in central Ecuador on Monday left at least 15 inmates dead and 20 injured, local authorities said.
Ecuador’s national penitentiary service confirmed the death toll in the Latacunga prison, located 80 km south of the capital city of Quito.
Officials attributed the fighting to national and international drug trafficking groups which have turned the Andean nation’s prisons into the scene of repeated massacres as the groups fight for power and drug distribution rights.
Agents are still searching the prison’s pavilions for bodies.
Videos in which gunfire and the screams of inmates can be heard were posted on social media.
Some 316 inmates were killed inside Ecuador’s prisons last year, according to the penitentiary service. So far this year there have been 90 deaths. The worst massacre took place in September of last year in the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil, where 125 prisoners were killed.
Ecuador’s prison system is designed for about 30,000 people, but some 35,000 inmates were held in 53 state prisons as of last month. — NNN-XINHUA