BOGOTA, Colombia

Twenty-seven inmates were found hanged over the weekend at a prison in Machala, the capital of Ecuador’s El Oro province, near the border with Peru in what officials described as another deadly outbreak of gang-related violence.

The National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) said in a statement that the victims “committed asphyxiation, which caused immediate death by hanging,” indicating the killings were carried out by other inmates — a method often used in gang disputes inside Ecuador’s prisons.

The mass killing came hours after a separate clash the same day that left four inmates dead and injured 33 prisoners and one police officer. The SNAI said the initial violence was linked to a “reorganization of prisoners” ahead of the opening of a new maximum-security facility built under President Daniel Noboa’s administration.

Elite police units were deployed “immediately” to restore order, detaining seven people for prosecution.

Ecuador’s prison system has faced years of escalating violence driven by powerful drug gangs. The country has been under a state of internal armed conflict since January 2024, when President Noboa placed the military in charge of the prisons.

The Machala incident follows a September 2025 riot in Esmeraldas that killed at least 17 inmates and another deadly clash at the same Machala facility just three days earlier that left 14 dead.

Since 2021, more than 500 inmates have been killed in Ecuador’s prisons, according to official figures. The deadliest incident occurred that year in Guayaquil, when over 100 inmates died in a large-scale riot between rival gangs.

Despite heavy military and police deployments, violence continues to plague the prison system, highlighting deep structural failures and ongoing gang control within detention centers.