At least 17 people have been killed in a prison riot in Ecuador, the second deadly prison brawl to hit the country this week.

Thursday’s fighting broke out in the coastal city of Esmeraldas near the Colombian border. Police reportedly found dead prisoners inside their cellblocks, and images shared on social media and verified by the AFP news agency show victims sprawled on the ground with bare, blood-stained torsos. At least two of them were decapitated.

Earlier this week, a prison riot caused by gang fighting in southern Ecuador killed 14 people and wounded 14, according to a local police chief.

Prisoners in the port town of Machala, south of Guayaquil, faced off with authorities on Monday, killing a guard and kidnapping officers, Police Chief William Calle told the TV network Ecuavisa.

Ecuador has a history of deadly prison violence.

More than 100 inmates were killed in Guayaquil in 2021 in a riot between rival gangs inside a prison – Ecuador’s biggest prison massacre – and more than 50 were injured.

Gang wars have largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where about 500 inmates have been killed since February 2021, often in gruesome fashion with their bodies dismembered and burned.

Last year, gang members took scores of prison guards hostage after the jailbreak of narcotics boss Jose Adolfo Macias, also known as Fito, while allies on the outside detonated bombs and held a television presenter at gunpoint live on air.

President Daniel Noboa declared a “state of internal armed conflict” and ordered the military to take control of the prisons. Last month, however, eight penitentiaries, including the Machala prison, were returned to police control.

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Nestled between the world’s top two cocaine exporters – Colombia and Peru – Ecuador has seen violence spiral in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

More than 70 percent of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data.