Ecuador has about 31,000 prisoners in 36 prisons with a capacity of 30,000 people.
At least 12 inmates have been killed in fresh clashes that broke out in a prison in the Ecuadoran port of Guayaquil, the prosecutor's office said, the latest deadly violence to rock the city's penitentiaries.
The deaths on Saturday are the most recent in a spate of brutalities that began on Wednesday when six detainees were found hanged in the same prison.
The next day, three prison guards were killed while they were outside the penitentiary complex, and on Friday, at least three prisoners were injured in gun battles.
Ecuadoran prisons are the scene of recurrent massacres between prisoners, against a backdrop of rivalry between criminal groups fighting for control of lucrative drug trafficking.
"Through the use of technology, it was established 12 people died," SNAI prison agency told reporters.
"An investigation has been opened to identify those responsible for the death of 12 inmates from the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil," the prosecutor's office said on Twitter.
The country's main port on the Pacific coast, Guayaquil has in recent years become the epicentre of drug trafficking in Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru — the world's main cocaine producers.
READ MORE: New wave of gang violence leaves deadly trail in Ecuador
'Worst time'
Since February 2021, eight massacres have been recorded in these prisons, with more than 400 prisoners killed, most of them dismembered and burned.
Last year, a United Nations delegation found that the violence in Ecuador's prisons was caused by years of state neglect of the penitentiary system.
"We do not deny the reality and the fact that we are in the worst moment of violence in the country," Ecuadorian Defence Minister Juan Zapata said on Friday, when the clashes began.
Overnight Friday to Saturday, the police and the army regained control of the prison, which houses around 6,800 inmates and is part of a large prison complex.
Drug traffickers use prisons as centres of operation, leading to deadly clashes at regular intervals.
In September, some 120 prisoners were killed in the Guayas 1 penitentiary during the deadliest massacre in the history of the country and one of the bloodiest in Latin America.
Drug-related violence is endemic in Ecuador. On Tuesday, around 30 armed men opened fire in the small fishing port of Esmeraldas, in the north of the country, near the Colombian border, killing nine people.
The assailants arrived by boat and car and, without a word, started shooting.
"What happened in Esmeraldas were not acts of common crime, they were terrorist acts," said Zapata.
Faced with the onslaught of violence, President Guillermo Lasso declared a 60-day state of emergency on March 3 in three provinces, including Guayaquil and Esmeraldas.
According to the first census of the country's prisons carried out in 2022, Ecuador has about 31,000 prisoners in 36 prisons with a capacity of 30,000 people.
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