Ecuador hostage crisis ends as jail inmates free dozens of guards, officers

Inmates in six Ecuadoran prisons have released the 50 guards and seven police officers who had been taken hostage in the latest spasm of narcotics-related mayhem, the state prison institute said.

The prison guards and police "were freed and are undergoing medical evaluation to verify their health status," the SNAI prison authority said on Friday, adding that all appeared to be in good health.

Authorities announced the hostage-takings on Thursday, but it remains unclear when the guards and police were captured and at which prisons.

The mass hostage-taking came a day after hundreds of soldiers, and police officers carried out an operation to search for weapons, ammunition and explosives in one of the country's main penitentiaries in the Andean city of Latacunga in the south.

Ecuador was once a peaceful haven nestled between the world's largest cocaine producers –Colombia and Peru.

However, the war on drugs in other South American nations displaced drug cartels to Ecuador, which has large Pacific ports with laxer controls, widespread corruption, and a dollarised economy.

Gangs in jail

Aside from using the country to export massive amounts of cocaine to Europe and the United States – often in containers of its main export, bananas – the presence of powerful drug cartels has stirred up bloody conflict between rival gangs.

Much of this has played out in the country's overcrowded prisons, where corruption has allowed gangs to control parts of the jails.

Conflict between powerful gangs linked to Colombian and Mexican cartels has led to more than 430 inmate deaths since 2021, in massacres that leave a trail of burned and dismembered bodies.

The country's National Police tallied 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the 2,042 reported during the same period in 2022.

That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the country's highest in history and double the total in 2021.