They find more bullets and drugs on the second day in a row of searches in the largest prison in Ecuador

Quito, Nov 9 (EFE).- More bullets, drugs and other prohibited objects were seized this Thursday, on the second consecutive day of police and military intervention in the Litoral Penitentiary, the most populated prison in Ecuador, after the brawl between prisoners occurred this week that left at least one inmate dead and fourteen injured, according to police reports.

This second consecutive day of police and military entry into the Litoral Penitentiary, located on the outskirts of the city of Guayaquil, focused on three of the twelve pavilions that the prison has, controlled by different criminal gangs.

Specifically, they inspected pavilions 1, 10 and 12 of this prison, the most populated in the country, housing around 5,600 inmates.

According to the report from the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, this Thursday 430 bullets of different calibers, a firing mechanism for a rifle, a charger and more than a kilo of substances suspected of being cocaine and marijuana were seized.

They also seized 34 communication radios, 150 mobile phones and other objects such as jewelry and an internet modem.

This is in addition to what was seized on Wednesday, when some 1,700 uniformed members of the Police and Armed Forces entered after the brawl that occurred this week in the Penitentiary, officially called by the authorities as Guayas Deprivation of Liberty Center Number 1.

On the first day of searches, they found one dead prisoner and fourteen wounded, according to the Police, in addition to 5 firearms, 4,179 bullets of different calibers (for rifles and pistols), a 40-millimeter fragmentary explosive grenade, 1 bulletproof vest and 2,750 grams of illegal substances (probably cocaine and marijuana).

Also 123 mobile phones, 10 internet routers, a digital scale, 4 watches, and a set of handcuffs and $1,275.

The Litoral Penitentiary has been the scene of several massacres among inmates, within the framework of a prison crisis that since 2020 has left more than 400 inmates murdered due to the dispute over control of the country’s prisons.

In previous months, other interventions and searches had already been carried out in the Penitentiary, where the Police and the Armed Forces found a large arsenal of weapons in the hands of the prisoners, which has a dozen pavilions under the control of different criminal gangs.

Among the weapons seized were assault rifles, grenades and even a grenade launcher, in addition to a large quantity of bullets, knives, as well as explosives and drugs.

Violence in prisons has also expanded to the streets of the country, which, daily, hears news of numerous murders, assaults, robberies, extortions and other types of crimes by criminal gangs that also dispute control of territories. in different cities of the country.

Ecuador closed the year 2022 with the highest homicide rate in its history, registering 25.62 per 100,000 inhabitants, but several security experts do not rule out that this indicator could reach 40 per 100,000 inhabitants at the end of this year, which It would place it as one of the most violent countries in Latin America.