At prison Guayaquil, the eponymous large coastal city of the southwest Equatorialsix inmates were found hanged in their cells at a time when the country is plagued by drug cartel violence.
According to the statement of the national penitentiary service SNAI, during the inspection of the cells in the Guayas 1 prison, the guards found six prisoners dead. All the victims were hanged in their cells.
Ecuadorian prisons are often turned into battlegrounds between rival gangs of inmates vying for control of the drug trade. Since February 2021 there have been eight massacres, in which at least 400 prisoners were killed – most of them burned alive and dismembered.
Guayaquil is the country’s largest port on the Pacific and in recent years has become a drug-trafficking hub, as it is located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine.
On March 3, faced with the violence of criminal organizations, President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency for 60 days in three provinces, including that of Guayaquil. Yesterday, nine people were killed in the northwestern province of Esmeralda when some 30 gunmen opened fire on a crowd at a fishing port. This unprecedented attack, described as a “massacre” by local media, marks a new escalation in gang violence in this part of the country.
Source: News Beast
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