Aljazeera |  1 year ago | international

Dozens of inmates have been killed in fierce clashes in a prison in Ecuador’s largest city of Guayaquil, according to authorities. “According to preliminary information, some 68 prisoners were killed and another 25 were wounded,” the Ecuador Prosecutor’s Office wrote on Twitter on Saturday, raising an earlier toll given by police of 58 people killed and 12 injured. The brawl at Penitenciaria del Litoral, on the outskirts of Guayaquil in Guayas province, was just one of several such incidents in the prison over the past few months.

 In September, a riot between rival gangs killed 119 prisoners. 

Nearly 300 inmates have been killed this year in Ecuador’s broken prison system, where thousands of inmates tied to drug gangs square off in violent clashes that often turn into riots.