Guards held hostage in Ecuador prisons amid wave of violence

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Thousands of police and security officials in Ecuador have been deployed and a state of emergency declared throughout the country’s prisons on Tuesday by President Guillermo Lasso, as dozens of guards in five different jails were taken hostage by inmates on Monday, July 24.

Curfews were issued in three coastal province, as a wave of violence in Ecuador attributed to disputes between rival drug gangs left multiple people dead over the weekend, including the mayor of the city of Manta.

Close to 100 guards in prisons in Cotopaxi, Azuay, Cañar, El Oro and Napo were being held hostage on Monday, as overcrowding and jail violence soars.

Meanwhile Ecuador’s Interior Minister Juan Zapata said that security forces had “taken control of the jails,” in the security operation to free the guards.

Inmates at 10 prisons in Ecuador, including Guayas No. 1, where at least six were killed in gang clashes on Sunday, said they were going on hunger strike, Ecuador’s prison authority, SNAI said, without saying why.

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