At least 31 inmates died Sunday afternoon at an Ecuadorian prison after a violent armed riot broke out, authorities said.
According to a statement shared by the country’s prison administration, 27 inmates died at a prison in the port city of Machala from suffocation and “instant death by hanging”, Reuters reported.
No further details were provided by the authority also known as SNAI.
Earlier on Sunday, the Prisons Authority reported four deaths at the same prison in a separate incident, which was brought under control after the deployment of a police tactical unit.
The prison authority also said the riot was sparked by an attempt to reorganize inmates in a new maximum security facility.
Ecuador is no stranger to prison riots, with overcrowding and corruption contributing to deadly prison riots in the country, where inmates, often members of drug cartels, smuggle weapons from the outside and organize criminal activities from behind bars.
In the past few years, deadly riots in the country’s prisons have claimed the lives of hundreds of inmates.
The latest incident took place in September, when a gang war riot inside Machala prison left 14 dead and another 14 injured.
Days after the September incident, another 17 people were killed in a prison riot in the northern city of Esmeraldas, near Ecuador’s border with Colombia.
The administration of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, which has vowed to take a tough stance against organized crime in the South American nation, has blamed the prison violence on rival gangs fighting for supremacy and territorial control.
