QUITO — Ecuador’s government declared a 60-day state of emergency across all 24 provinces Saturday after prison riots at six facilities simultaneously left 31 inmates dead and 87 injured, in what officials described as a coordinated action by organized crime groups with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels. The uprisings began overnight and were still ongoing at 18:00 local time.
The violence erupted less than 48 hours after the government announced a new security partnership with the United States that would double the number of FBI advisors embedded with Ecuador’s national police. President Daniel Noboa ordered the deployment of 4,000 additional military personnel to prison facilities nationwide. The ICRC said it had been denied access to the affected prisons.
Diego Vargas is Media Hook’s Latin America Correspondent.
Written by Diego Vargas, Latin America Correspondent