Guayaquil

Prison inmates from rival gangs in Ecuador fought each other with guns, explosives and blades in a bloodbath that left at least 68 dead in the same prison where a riot in September claimed 119 lives, officials said on Nov. 13.

Ecuador is trying to restore order in one of its largest prisons after a riot that killed at least 116 prisoners in the latest attack of violence, which authorities linked to groups fighting to control drug trafficking routes, Reuters reports.

Police gained control of an Ecuador prison on Sept. 30 where rioting has left at least 118 inmates dead, some of them decapitated, as rival drug gangs went to war armed with guns and grenades.

Another 86 inmates were wounded, six of them critically, according to Ecuador's prisons authority, in one of the deadliest prison battles in South American history.

Ecuador's president has declared a state of emergency in the prison system following a battle among gang members in a coastal lockup that killed at least 116 people and injured 80 in what authorities say was the worst prison bloodbath ever in the country.

Officials said at least five of the dead were found to have been beheaded.

Ecuador President Guillermo Lasso has declared a state of emergency in the prison system, something which, among other things, allowed the government to send police and soldiers to prison.

The uprising started when a fight broke out between criminal gangs in a prison, which is located in the coastal town of Guayaquil, on Tuesday morning local time.

A Colombian advertising company is pitching a novel if morbid solution to shortages of hospital beds and coffins during the coronavirus pandemic: combine them.

ABC Displays has created a cardboard bed with metal railings that designers say can double as a casket if a patient dies.

The fish from Ecuador were to be delivered at Piraeus port on Christmas Eve. However, photos sent to a Greek undercover policeman's cellphone on December 21 showed that cod was not the only product stowed in the container.

QUITO (Reuters) - A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck central Ecuador on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, injuring one person and disrupting power supply to nearby areas.

It hit 94 km (58 miles) south of the city of Ambato at a depth of 112 km (69 miles), the USGS said.

A ton and a half of cocaine, hidden in a bag of chocolate powder, was captured at an Ecuador airport before it was sent to Europe, authorities said.

"This 1500kg of cocaine mixed with chocolate products was about to be sent to Austria," the police wrote on twitter after the capture of the drug at Guayaquil.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa says the death toll from a magnitude-7.8 earthquake has risen to 233. Correa sent the new figure on his official Twitter account while flying home from Rome to deal with the emergency.