Updated 03:27 | Published at 3:01 am
50 prison guards and seven police officers have been taken hostage by inmates in a prison in the city of Cuenca in Ecuador, the country’s interior minister said on Thursday, local time.
– We are concerned about the safety of our officials, said Juan Zapata at a press conference in the capital Quito.
The incident takes place a day after hundreds of police and military officers carried out an operation in which they searched for weapons, ammunition and explosives in one of the country’s largest prisons in the city of Latacunga.
Ecuador’s prison authority has expressed that the hostage-taking may be revenge for the police operation. Later, however, the authorities stated that it was a protest against the transfer of prisoners to other prisons.
Also at the end of July, about 50 prison guards were taken hostage by prisoners in Cuenca. A state of national emergency was also declared at the time after riots broke out in the country’s high-security prison in Guayaquil, where more than 30 inmates were killed.