QUITO, Ecuador. —This Sunday, a prisoner revolt in a prison in southern Ecuador that left at least four inmates dead and more than three dozen injuredreported the prison authorities.
The prison watchdog said in a statement that the riots in the Machala prison373 kilometers south of Quito, in the province of El Orooriginated from “the reorganization of prisoners in the new maximum security prison”, soon to be inaugurated in another coastal province.
Among the injured there are 33 inmates and a police officer, the official report added, without providing more details of what happened.
According to the prison agency, the police regained control of the prison.
Dead behind bars. A confrontation between prisoners left four dead and 43 injured this morning in the Machala prison. He @SNAI_Ec published that the reason for the violence is the reorganization of the inmates in the new maximum security prison. #ElOro pic.twitter.com/cqeQfIpmgN
— LaHistoria (@lahistoriaec) November 9, 2025
Previous confrontations
This is not the first violent episode in that prison, where at the end of September 14 prisoners died and another 14 were injured, in an event that the authorities attributed to a dispute between criminal gangs.
🚨 A series of riots in the Machala prison recorded early this Sunday, November 9, leaves at least four inmates dead and 44 injured. 📲 pic.twitter.com/iOZKjNDUf2
— Ecuavisa Noticias (@EcuavisaInforma) November 9, 2025
Since 2021 Ecuador faces the worst wave of violence in the country, promoted by local criminal groups allies with transnational cartelsaccording to authorities. Since then, there have been more than a dozen clashes in prisons, which together have left more than 500 dead.
One of the worst massacres occurred that year in the dangerous Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquilin which 119 inmates died. In that same prison, 17 prisoners died in November of last year.
The authorities attribute the prison riots and massacres to disputes between criminal gangs for the control of those places, and for the control of routes of drug export y territories to distribute towards the interior of the country.
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