quit. In a new search at the Litoral Penitentiary, the most dangerous prison in Ecuador, hundreds of police and military find weapons, explosives and narcotics, the Prosecutor’s Office reported on Friday.
In his account on the social network X, formerly Twitter, he specified that the uniformed officers located “rifles, bombs, grenades, explosives, cash and drugs inside the offices of the Secretary for Attention to Prisoners” of that prison. He did not report whether there are civilian employees involved.
The publication is accompanied by photographs of boxes where these elements are observed, as well as air conditioners, fans and electronics belonging to the inmates. You can also see soldiers with long weapons and hundreds of prisoners sitting on the ground.
The day before, in a similar operation carried out by around 3,000 police and soldiers, weapons and ammunition, a pool with dozens of edible fish, chicken and duck farms, and 15 dogs were located inside the prison.
This prison located in the port city of Guayaquil, 270 kilometers southwest of the capital, was intervened thanks to a state of emergency declared for 60 days in all prisons in the country.
Between July 22 and 23, the Litoral Penitentiary was the scene of clashes between inmates armed with rifles, submachine guns, pistols and other weapons, including a grenade launcher, which left 31 dead and 14 injured and the detention of more than 100 prison guards in the rest of the country’s prisons, according to a report from the prosecutor’s office.
Almost two years ago, in the same place, a brutal confrontation between prisoners from different pavilions left 119 dead.
The Litoral Penitentiary is located within a prison complex in Guayaquil and has a capacity for 9,500 inmates, although until the first quarter of this year it exceeded that number by almost 3,000 inmates.
The government of President Guillermo Lasso has attributed the growing violence that plagues prisons and almost the entire country to the dispute between criminal gangs for control of local and international routes for drug trafficking.
