Most wanted Ecuadorian drug lord captured
Clashes between rival gangs in a prison in Ecuador left 13 inmates and a prison guard dead, police in the violence-wracked South American country said Monday.
Some inmates escaped in the violence during which another 14 people were injured at Machala prison, a masked police officer told the Ecuavisa channel. Thirteen have been recaptured, the officer said.
Ecuador's prisons are among the most dangerous in the world, and many have been taken over by drug gangs. The penitentiaries have been under military control since January 2024, when President Daniel Noboa declared a state of "internal armed conflict" after a brutal wave of violence, sparked by the jailbreak of a powerful crime boss.
In September 2024, the director of Ecuador's biggest prison, Maria Daniela Icaza, was killed in an armed attack while driving. Icaza's death came just days after the head of a prison in the Amazonian province of Sucumbios, Alex Guevara, was killed, also in an attack while traveling by car.
Organized crime violence has transformed Ecuador, a country of 17 million, into one of the most violent nations in the world.
Nestled between the globe's top two cocaine exporters, Colombia and Peru, it has seen violence spiral in recent years as enemy gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
Gang wars have largely played out inside the country's prisons, where hundreds of inmates have been killed since February 2021, often in gruesome fashion — their bodies dismembered and burnt.
Earlier this month, the U.S. designated two Ecuadorian gangs, Los Choneros and Los Lobos, as foreign terrorist organizations in the Trump administration's latest move against cartels.
More than 70% of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador's ports, according to government data.
Recently, pool halls in Ecuador have been targeted with violence. Last week, a suspected gang attack on a pool hall in Santo Domingo left seven dead and four wounded. In August, seven people were killed at a billiards parlor in the same city. A similar pool hall massacre took place in July in the southwestern tourist city of General Villamil Playas, leaving at least nine dead.
Ecuador recorded more than 4,600 homicides in the first half of the year, a 47% increase from the same period of 2024, data from the Ecuadoran Observatory of Organized Crime shows.
Gang violence continues unabated following the recapture in June of the country's biggest drug lord, Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, after he escaped from a maximum-security prison in 2024.
In July, the Ecuadoran government extradited Macías to the United States, and he pleaded not guilty. A seven-count indictment charged Macías, who leads Los Choneros, with multiple counts, including international cocaine distribution and smuggling firearms from the U.S.
