QUITO: Clashes between rival drug gangs claimed at least 10 lives in the second deadly riot in an Ecuadoran prison in days, police in the violence-wracked country said Thursday.
Bloody fighting broke out in a prison in the troubled coastal city of Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border, where police said they found 10 dead prisoners in two cell blocks — adding to about 500 inmates massacred in the country since 2021.
Images shared on social media and verified by AFP show dead men sprawled on the ground with bare, blood-stained torsos, at least two of them decapitated.
Worried family members gathered outside the prison for news of their loved ones.
On Monday, 13 prisoners and a guard were reported killed in southwest Ecuador, whose overcrowded and violent prisons have become operational centers for organized crime groups.
