Thousands of military and police officers raided several prisons in Ecuador on Sunday following an unprecedented spiral of violence in the country.
Officers searched for weapons, ammunition and explosives, and worked to restore order after a week of incidents and detentions of more than a hundred officials.
The operation came a day after President Daniel Noboa and the official body that controls the prisons announced the release of nearly 170 prison officers and administrative staff who had been held by inmates for six days.
One prison officer died in the south of the country.
Some 1,100 uniformed members of the security bloc, made up of the armed forces and the police, intervened in the early hours of the morning in the prison in the coastal city of Esmeraldas, in the north of Ecuador and one of the most dangerous, the military institution reported on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
Images released by the Armed Forces show more than a thousand inmates of the prison lying face down on the ground with their hands clasped behind their backs, while they are being guarded in a courtyard by agents.
