Ecuadoran police defused an explosives-laden drone Tuesday on the roof of a prison in a complex that has been the scene of gruesome inmate massacres committed by rival gangs.
Interior Minister Juan Zapata posted photos on X, formerly Twitter, of the drone he described as an "explosive device" perched on the roof of La Roca maximum security jail in Guayaquil.
The prison holds some of Ecuador's most dangerous criminals, including six Colombians suspected in the killing of presidential hopeful Fernando Villavicencio last month.
Zapata said the drone was "intended to be brought into" the prison.
The minister posted a video hours later of the device being blown up, all but destroying the roof of the detention facility.
He said a specialized team "neutralised the drone," and all prisoners in the affected area had been transferred somewhere else for their safety.
Ecuador, until a few years ago a peaceful haven nestled between the world's largest cocaine producers - Colombia and Peru, has recently descended into violence as it has itself become a hub for drug trafficking.
Rival gangs with links to Colombian and Mexican cartels regularly clash in prisons, with more than 430 inmates killed since 2021, often leaving a trail of burned and dismembered bodies.
The homicide rate in the country of 18.3 million rose to a record 26 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, almost double the previous year and higher than the rates in Colombia, Mexico or Brazil.
The city most affected by the violence has been the sprawling port of Guayaquil in the southwest, used by the fast-expanding drug trade to smuggle narcotics to Europe and the United States.
In 2021, the SNAI prison authority reported an attack with drones on the Guayaquil prison complex that includes La Roca. There were no casualties, but major damage to the prison roofs.
The country's prisons have become dens of crime due to "the increasingly acute state absence... that has caused part of the prison population to become effectively hostages of criminal gangs that have much influence, also in politics," Billy Navarrete of the CDH rights watchdog told AFP.
The violence has spread to all spheres of life, and on August 9, Villavicencio was gunned down in Quito ahead of a first round of voting in Ecuador's general elections. A second round is scheduled for October 15.
A mayor, a national lawmaker and a local political leader have also been killed during the election campaign.