Sharjah24 – AFP: At least 75 inmates died Tuesday and several were injured in riots blamed on gang rivalry at three jails in Ecuador's overcrowded prison system, authorities said.

As security forces battled to regain control, distraught family members waited desperately for news outside the prison in Ecuador's western port city of Guayaquil, where officials said 21 died.

Another 33 died at the prison in Cuenca in the south and eight in Latacunga in the center of the South American country, according to Edmundo Moncayo, director of the government's SNAI prisons management body.

The authorities, he said, "are acting to retake control."

The military was deployed to help police quell the uprising.

The public defender's office, an entity akin to an ombudsman set up to defend human rights, called the violence "an unprecedented massacre" and expressed its "concern over the lack of security in the country, which is reflected in the increase in crime and violence inside these prison facilities."