(MENAFN) Ecuador's national prison authority SNAI verified Sunday that 27 additional inmates perished from asphyxiation during a detention facility uprising in a southern coastal region, elevating total fatalities to 31.

Violence erupted in the predawn hours at a correctional institution in Machala, capital of the southern coastal province of El Oro, initially claiming four lives and wounding multiple individuals including one law enforcement officer, preliminary official accounts indicated.

Regional news outlets attributed the unrest to inmate "reorganization" procedures and relocations to a maximum-security compound.

Machala ranks among the South American nation's most violence-plagued urban centers.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa enacted a fresh 60-day emergency declaration on Nov. 5 spanning five coastal provinces and three municipalities in the central provinces of Cotopaxi and Bolivar to suppress "grave internal unrest" driven by intensifying organized criminal violence.

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