At least 43 prisoners have died in the early hours of this Monday during a new prison riot in the country, supposedly caused by clashes between rival gangs. This time in the prison of the city of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, located in the center of Ecuador, reported the Ecuadorian prosecutor's office.

"Forty-three detainees have died so far," the Attorney General's Office announced on its Twitter account, while Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo reported some 41 deaths shortly before at a press conference.

"Unfortunately, 41 people deprived of liberty have lost their lives in this incident. Most of them, if not almost one hundred percent, at first glance can be seen, were deprived of life with a knife, not with a firearm. fire," he said at a press conference. He added that most of the bodies "were exposed and attacked in the pavilions and in the cells."

In Ecuador, some 400 inmates have died in the last two years in clashes between rival organizations linked to drug trafficking, which dispute the internal control of prisons and has ramifications inside and outside prisons, according to the authorities.

Recently, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a report on the prison crisis in Ecuador in which it urged the Government to regain internal control of the prisons, provide decent conditions for prisoners and develop crime prevention policies where do not prioritize incarceration.

Until the end of 2021 there were more than 36,000 inmates in 36 centers, including prisons and social rehabilitation centers, whose capacity is 30,000, although overcrowding reached 62% in prisons such as Guayaquil, the most populous in the country with 7,231 inmates and scene of the bloodiest episodes experienced last year.

To solve the prison crisis, the government of the president, Guillermo Lasso, is in the process of hiring 1,400 new prison officers, granting around 5,000 pardons to prisoners convicted of minor crimes and developing the country's first human rights policy towards the prison population. .