Ecuadorian authorities have confirmed that 27 prisoners were found hanged on Sunday afternoon at a prison in Machala, a city in the southern province of El Oro, bordering Peru. The announcement was made by the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (Snai). In a statement, Snai noted that "among them (the inmates) they committed asphyxiation, which produced immediate death by suspension."
In the early hours of the same morning, four other inmates were killed and 33 were injured, along with one police officer, at the same prison, Snai reported. Without providing further details, the agency attributed this incident to the "reorganization of the deprived of liberty in the new maximum-security prison."
Snai had initially reported five inmate deaths in the early morning incident but later corrected the number to four.
This event is part of a broader violence crisis. On November 1st, twelve people were found dead in three Ecuadorian prisons, according to Snai. Six men were discovered in the Penitenciaría del Litoral, Ecuador's most populous and dangerous prison, located in the coastal city of Guayaquil; four in the Turi prison in the Andean city of Cuenca; and two in the prison of Esmeraldas in the north of the country. Regarding the deaths at the Penitenciaría, Snai stated they were "natural deaths." The Ministry of the Interior indicated the inmates likely died from tuberculosis. As for the deaths at the other two centers, local media reported, citing police reports, that some bodies had gunshot wounds, others had stab wounds, and some had hematomas.
Prisons are one of the epicenters of the unprecedented criminal violence crisis Ecuador is facing, with approximately 600 inmates killed inside since 2021, mostly in a series of massacres resulting from clashes between rival gangs. Some prisons are militarized, while others are under the control of the National Police as part of the "internal armed conflict" President Daniel Noboa declared in 2024 to fight criminal gangs, who are blamed for the escalation of violence that has made the country a leader in the homicide rate in Latin America. The situation has intensified in 2025, as Ecuador recorded 4,619 homicides in the first half of the year, a 47% increase from the same period in 2024, when 3,143 were counted.