116 Inmates Dead After Drug Cartel Wars Flare In Ecuador Jail

A bitter struggle between rival Mexican cartels to control cocaine trafficking routes in Ecuador has erupted in a day of bloodshed inside a high-security prison that left 116 inmates dead. Many of the victims were butchered with chainsaws or beheaded with machetes.

- Dan Collyns

As security forces battled to retake the Litoral penitentiary in the coastal city of Guayaquil on Wednesday, scores of bodies were found dumped in bathrooms and corridors, piled and burned in courtyards , or even stuffed into air ducts .

A day earlier, graphic images posted on social media showed inmates from the rival gangs Los Choneros and Los Lobos fighting with machetes, guns and grenades , in the third – and by far the deadliest – prison riot this year.

Col Mario Pazmiño, the former director of Ecuador’s military intelligence, said the escalating savagery was driven by Mexican crime groups vying for control of lucrative smuggling routes through local criminal gangs. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels both operated through national “megagangs” that included Los Choneros, Los Lobos , Los Tigretones and Los Lagartos, he said.