Ten killed in latest Ecuador prison clashes

Clashes between rival gangs claimed at least 10 lives in the second deadly riot in an Ecuadoran prison in days, police said Thursday.

Violence 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 inmate deaths in the country since 2021.

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.

Organized crime has transformed Ecuador, a country of about 17 million, into one of the most violent countries in the world.

Nestled between the globe's top two cocaine exporters -- Colombia and Peru -- Ecuador has seen violence spiral in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

More than 70 percent of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador's ports, according to government data.

Since February 2021, gang wars have largely played out inside the country's prisons, where inmates have often been killed in gruesome fashion -- their bodies dismembered and burnt.

Ecuador's biggest prison massacre happened in 2021, when more than 100 inmates were killed in clashes in the port of Guayaquil in the southwest.