QUITO: Inmates at a prison in Ecuador, gripped by a wave of violence ascribed to a deadly gang war, have taken eight guards hostage, the country's prison administration said Tuesday.
The incident took place in the same city where on Monday two beheaded bodies were found hanging from a bridge in the South American country where some 400 inmates have been killed in the escalating gang conflict since February 2021.
“Eight employees are being held” at a prison in Esmeraldas in Ecuador’s northwest, the SNAI prison authority told reporters via WhatsApp.
A video circulated on Twitter appears to show two guards with explosives tied to their bodies and a man claiming to be an inmate denouncing prison “corruption.” AFP could not independently verify the video.
“If war is what they want, war is what they’ll get,“ says the man, his face obscured, adding: “We will use these guards.”
The SNAI had earlier announced on Twitter that it was moving inmates from the Guayas 1 prison in Guayaquil that has been the main scene of recent prison massacres.
It said the transfers were necessitated by required repairs to cell blocks.
But according to the purported hostage video, the move was the reason for the events at Esmeraldas.
Esmeraldas and Guayaquil were both hit with a series of attacks with car bombs, explosives and bullets in the early hours of Tuesday that left two police officers dead and two others injured, according to authorities.
“Given the events in Esmeraldas and GYE (Guayaquil), we activated our tactical and investigative units to maintain order and find the perpetrators,“ the police said on Twitter.
Once a relatively peaceful neighbor of major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen a wave of violent crime that authorities blame on turf battles between rival drug gangs believed to have ties to Mexican cartels.
Hundreds of inmates have been killed -- many beheaded or incinerated -- as the fighting spilled into prisons. Civilians have increasingly been caught up in the violence, which has included a spate of car bombs.
Ecuador has gone from being a drug transit route in recent years to an important distribution center in its own right, with the United States and Europe the main destinations. - AFP
